<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Love in a Blue Moon by zimriya</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29979177">Love in a Blue Moon</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/zimriya/pseuds/zimriya'>zimriya</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Lunae [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>NCT (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Gaslighting, M/M, Minor Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Lee Taeyong, Minor Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Kim Jungwoo, Original Character(s), Police Officer Suh Youngho | Johnny, Vampire Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun, Vampire Lee Taeyong, Vampires, Werewolf Mark Lee (NCT), Werewolf Mates, Werewolves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 17:08:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>35,023</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29979177</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/zimriya/pseuds/zimriya</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Johnny gets a call that some guy is running naked through Central Park, he figures he’ll be arresting someone for indecent exposure, or maybe just a drunk and disorderly. Instead he gets Mark, who says he’s not drunk—he’s a werewolf.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mark Lee/Suh Youngho | Johnny</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Lunae [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2239812</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>264</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Love in a Blue Moon</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic is extra for Hexmen, because it’s Johnmark <i>werewolves</i>. I’ve tagged for “gaslighting” because there is some in the fic, but it’s in the context of everyone pretending Johnny didn’t see a guy turn into a werewolf and does not pertain to their relationship. Also, while this fic contains some similarities to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27527029/chapters/67317691"><i>Blood and Peaches</i></a>, it is not set in the same universe and not many of the same universe rules apply.</p><p>Betaed by Hexmen with a few minor crime consults by Aixing. Enjoy.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h4>Monday, July 3, 2023<br/>
The Buck Moon</h4><p> </p>
<hr/><p>When Johnny gets the call that a college student is running naked through Central Park, he takes one look at the date on his phone and sighs. It’s nearing midnight on a Monday, but tomorrow is Independence Day, so drunken revelry is pretty much to be expected. Johnny’s been dealing with the celebration throughout the entire weekend; the start of Monday evening had been quiet, but of course the peace couldn’t last that long. Johnny’s well within walking distance of the butterfly gardens, so he radios in that he’s got it and switches course.</p><p>Luckily—or unluckily, depending on how he thinks about it—the naked college student is easy to find. Johnny spots the guy right away—his bare skin shines out like a beacon in the moonlight. Immediately he gets where the college student descriptor came from. The guy is tall (but shorter than Johnny) with dark hair and glasses, although as Johnny watches, he drops down into a crouch so that he can place them on a pile of what has to be his clothes.</p><p>For two seconds Johnny just stares at the oddity of such a picture, before he clears his throat. “Hey!” he calls.</p><p>The college student practically leaps three feet in the air, whirling around to face Johnny. As Johnny gets closer, the guy starts shaking his head, both hands raised. It turns out, he’s not naked. He’s wearing a pair of dark boxers with some sort of white shape on the front, but nothing else. Johnny won’t lie—part of him is very fucking relieved. Despite the lack of nudity, Johnny keeps his eyes up and his expression pleasant.</p><p>“No, no, you can’t be here,” the guy is saying, and Johnny fights the urge to laugh.</p><p>“<em>I</em> can’t be here?” he says, honestly baffled.</p><p>Instead of looking chagrined the guy only looks more panicked, eyes jumping around the park with a frenetic energy. “You need to go,” he says, zeroing in on Johnny again. “Seriously—before it’s too late—”</p><p>Johnny gets within grabbing distance and raises both hands, trying to appear calming. “There’s no need to panic,” he says, keeping his voice soothing and even. “Why don’t you come with me to the station and we can talk?”</p><p>The guy’s eyes flick back to where he neatly folded his clothes, and Johnny’s weird-radar pings. The guy <em>neatly folded his clothes</em>, almost ritualistically, and set them off the path tucked under one of the bushes. That’s way too much foresight for someone drunk enough to get naked in Central Park, so Johnny figures it must be drugs.</p><p>“You can’t be here,” the guy says again.</p><p>Johnny swallows a sigh. “I don’t suppose I can ask you to at least put on some pants?”</p><p>Almost as if prompted, the guy bends back down and starts to <em>bury</em> his clothes, dropping dirt right onto his glasses with both hands. For a few seconds Johnny stands there baffled, but then he jumps back to attention, starting forward and grabbing the guy by the arms. He hauls him upright with only minor fuss, trying not to let his annoyance show on his face.</p><p>“What are you doing?” Johnny says.</p><p>“You need to <em>go</em>,” the guy says. “I—it’s <em>dangerous</em>.”</p><p>Johnny glances around reflexively, looking for weapons or potential threats. He finds none. He faces his half-naked college student. “Sir,” he says, in his best, no-nonsense cop voice. “You’ve clearly been drinking”—Johnny pauses to give the man’s breath a whiff and finds nothing—“or have taken something—”</p><p>“I haven’t <em>taken something</em>, I’m a <em>werewolf</em>!” interrupts the guy. “And you can’t be here, because I could hurt you—oh God—” The guy goes pale, both hands coming up to cover his mouth almost like he regrets saying all that, but he said it, and Johnny heard him say it, and now Johnny has to deal with it.</p><p>Johnny doesn’t get paid enough. “You are on drugs,” he decides. “Now put on your clothes so I can take you to go pee in a cup.”</p><p>The guy does not put on his clothes. Instead, the guy starts muttering about how these are his favorite jeans and they were really fucking expensive so he can’t put them on and risk destroying them. He seems frustrated, gazing around shiftily before looking Johnny dead in the eyes with a surprising amount of fervor. “Fuck it—I’m a werewolf, so you can’t take me to the station and lock me up because it’s <em>dangerous</em>—”</p><p>Now that they’re this close, Johnny realizes that the shape on the front of the guy’s boxers is a wolf, the head very conveniently posed so that it’s howling up the right side of the guy’s dick. If he had to guess, he’d say the boxers are to blame for the guy’s delusion. Johnny wouldn’t have bought them himself, but who is he to judge.</p><p>He pulls out his handcuffs. “Look,” he says, interrupting the guy’s tirade. “I have to cuff you and take you in, so we can do that with you wearing nothing but your boxers, or we can do it with you wearing your clothes. It’s your choice.” The guy scowls at him, squinting, and Johnny remembers very suddenly about the glasses. He picks the guy’s belongings up out of the dirt and then perches the eyewear on the guy’s face, struck suddenly by how intimate the situation has gotten. “Sorry,” Johnny mutters, feeling uncomfortable. He clears his throat. “Handcuffs.” He brandishes them again, now that the guy can see. “I can put them on you naked, or I can put them on you clothed.”</p><p>The guy just frowns. “Those won’t hold me,” he says, with an arrogant sniff. “I’m a <em>werewolf</em>—”</p><p>“<em>Clothes</em>.” Johnny thrusts the clothes at him, fighting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. At least the guy hasn’t tried to pull a runner.</p><p>“I’m not drunk,” the guy says petulantly, even as he bends to pull on his jeans. “Or on drugs. I’m just—”</p><p>“A werewolf. I heard you the first three times,” Johnny says, as the guy finishes pulling on his shirt. “Unfortunately for you, they don’t exist, so you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t believe you about not being on drugs.”</p><p>The guy stands, fully clothed, and faces Johnny with flared nostrils. He says nothing. Johnny reads him his Miranda rights and tugs his arms behind his back to snap on the handcuffs, before starting on the long trek back to the precinct.</p><p>They’re halfway around the pond when Johnny’s radio buzzes to life about a potential robbery on Madison Avenue—several potential robberies on Madison Avenue, actually—and so the precinct is pretty bare when Johnny pushes open the doors a few minutes later. Most people are off working their own beats, or dealing with that mess. From what Johnny can parse, someone threw bricks through the windows on Madison Avenue, hitting Louboutin, Vera Wang, and Almine Rech Gallery. Rogers isn’t at her desk, but Williams looks up at them, eyes passing over the guy in cuffs without really seeing him. “Oh good—that’s the nudist?”</p><p>The guy seems to startle, glancing at Williams as if he hadn’t even noticed him, and Johnny shoots him another concerned look. The closer they’d gotten to the building the more listless the guy had become, no longer even bothering with the halfhearted protestations about how Johnny was in danger because the guy was a werewolf. Johnny had kept up the conversation in hopes of keeping him conscious, but had given up somewhere around 85th street. Now, he waits for the guy to say something. Nothing comes. Johnny really hopes he’s not about to be dealing with a bad crash.</p><p>“Yeah,” Johnny answers Williams, who is already back to his phone, seemingly unconcerned. He sits the guy down in the chair in front of his own desk and uncuffs him so that he can book him. “Do you have I.D.?”</p><p>The guy does—a wallet left in the pocket of his jeans—and Johnny slides it open on the table in front of him, further convinced of his inebriated state. “You were just going to leave your wallet in the middle of Central Park?” he says, just to make sure. “Mark Lee.”</p><p>Mark Lee startles at the use of his full name but juts out his chin. “I was going to bury it,” he says snappishly.</p><p>“Okay,” says Johnny, since that makes absolutely no sense. Mark is twenty-four and was born in Toronto, but he has a New York State driver’s license even though he—like most people living in this city, Johnny included—“doesn’t really drive.” Mark continues to insist he isn’t drunk or on any sort of drugs, but when Johnny asks him why he wasn’t wearing more than his boxers in the butterfly gardens, he can’t come up with a proper response—just goes quiet and stares up at Johnny with angry, red cheeks.</p><p>Johnny takes him back for the mug shot and prints him, before administering a breathalyzer—it comes back well under the legal limit and Johnny ignores the triumphant look Mark levels at him—and then sending Mark off to the bathroom to pee in a cup.</p><p>“Let me know if you need any help,” he tells him, and Mark actually bares his teeth at him, ears practically on fire they’re so flushed.</p><p>Mark emerges from the bathroom several minutes later looking even more red in the face and pissed off, but balks once he sees the keys to the drunk tank in Johnny’s hand. He’s got the urine sample, which Johnny takes from him without pause, but he looks… terrified. And young. Suddenly Mark looks oh so very young.</p><p>Johnny stares at him and thinks of the siblings he always wanted his parents to give him and heaves out a long sigh. “Listen, Mark,” he says, lowering his voice kindly. “I get that this wasn’t how you thought you’d be spending your Fourth of July—”</p><p>“I’m a werewolf,” Mark says again, in the tones of someone who is aware that their words are pointless yet is also unable to stop them. “The reason I was almost naked in the butterfly gardens is that I’m a werewolf and you can’t put me in there because it’s going to be twelve forty-five soon and I’ll turn and eat you!”</p><p>Johnny just exhales, willing himself infinite patience, before taking hold of Mark by one arm. He walks him to the drunk tank, unlocks the doors, and then gently pushes Mark inside. “I don’t even know what to say to that,” he offers finally, but Mark just sinks down onto the bench in the farthest corner of the drunk tank and does his best to curl into a—hopefully embarrassed—ball.</p>
<hr/><p>Around twelve-forty, Mark seems to get particularly twitchy. Johnny’s been stuck in the precinct with Williams and the rest of their skeleton crew since everyone else is off dealing with the mess on Madison, which has honestly been a welcome reprieve, given the date. He did half of a crossword puzzle all without Mark making a sound, but around a quarter to, Mark stands and starts to move. It’s nothing anyone’s never done in the drunk tank before, but something about the circuitous route of Mark’s restlessness is setting Johnny’s teeth on edge. There’s something about the efficacy of his movement that makes Johnny think he’s purposefully hitting every square inch of the drunk tank, but that doesn’t make any sense, since surely Mark’s just <em>pacing</em>.</p><p>Johnny watches him shift around the drunk tank with only one eye, frowning over number eighty-five down, <em>South Korean boy band formed on August 25, 2016</em>. It’s one of those things Johnny feels like he should know, first because it’s his heritage, and second because he spent the summer after high school in Seoul trying to make it as a K-pop star before one too many failed auditions sent him back home to Chicago to try something else. The answer eludes him, and Johnny sets down the paper with a sigh.</p><p>“Look,” Johnny says, after two more seconds of watching Mark walk in circles in the limited space. “You’re going to be in here all night while you sober up so you might as well sit down—”</p><p>“I am not <em>drunk</em>,” Mark snaps back, not letting up on the pacing. “Which you know, because of the breathalyzer!”</p><p>Johnny has to concede that Mark did pass his breathalyzer, but unfortunately that doesn’t save him from the public nudity. Plus, Mark said the reason he was half-naked in Central Park was because he is a <em>werewolf</em>, which Johnny thinks any sane cop in his position would have attributed to some sort of controlled substance.</p><p>He goes to tell Mark that, opening his mouth to say the words, “Yes, but you keep insisting you’re a<em> werewolf</em>,” but he gets stopped when Mark gives out a cut-off yell and then bends over at the waist to pant towards the floor. “Mark,” Johnny starts to say, standing with concern, but as quickly as he’d leaned over Mark rises back up.</p><p>“I’m fine,” he says, one hand out like he’s protecting Johnny or something, before he’s taken over by another shudder, this one accompanied by something far more resembling a whimper. “Fuck, this one is going to be bad—you shouldn’t have put me in here!” As he talks, he reaches for the hem of his t-shirt, taking hold of it with shaking fingers and starting to pull it over his head.</p><p>Johnny watches him blankly for three seconds, before his mouth catches up with his brain. “No—hey—none of that—”</p><p>Mark peels the t-shirt over his head and tosses it onto the floor of the drunk tank, chest rising and falling like this is some sort of feat of extreme athleticism instead of just basic “can you dress and undress yourself” 101. His glasses come off immediately afterwards, placed delicately on the bench he was sitting on, before Mark bends over and groans. His fingers fumble for his fly, and this time Johnny’s attempted interjection is interrupted by the skin of his back.</p><p>It moves.</p><p>It <em>ripples</em>.</p><p>It does something Johnny hadn’t thought skin was allowed to do, and Johnny is starting to feel faint.</p><p>“What—”</p><p>Mark interrupts his quest to get his jeans off to throw his head back and <em>howl</em>, for lack of a better word, the sound coming out oddly distorted by his human vocal cords. The thought is horrifying the moment Johnny has the sense to think more about it, but he can’t shake his initial interpretation. Mark sounds inhuman, and when he gives up on the button of his jeans to stand hunched and half-naked in the middle of the drunk tank, Johnny only has a split second to glance out the window of the station at the glow of moon before all of his attention is occupied by what is happening in the cell beside him.</p><p>Mark… is having a seizure.</p><p>Mark… is having a seizure?</p><p>Mark is snarling, his face and mouth opening wider and wider like the bones of his jaw are splitting open, and the longer Johnny watches the more horrifying the image gets. Mark’s entire face is changing, elongating, and the transformation doesn’t stop there. As Johnny looks on, the whole of him seems to elongate. He falls onto his hands and knees, making awful, awful noises, and the skin of his back and shoulders continues to rip and shift. There’s a cracking, which Johnny’s brain determines is the breaking and reforming of Mark’s fucking <em>bones</em>, around the time Mark’s skin starts to sprout fucking <em>fur</em>. Mark gains a muzzle, terrifying sharp teeth, and a fucking <em>tail</em>, all in the space of minutes, and Johnny just watches the entire thing with his mouth fallen open and his heart trying to beat right out of his chest. He sways towards the drunk tank almost before he can help himself, but that draws Mark—the thing’s attention, and its head comes up to <em>look at Johnny</em>, piercing yellow eyes locking onto Johnny’s own with a laser focus.</p><p>Its mouth opens and something resembling human speech tries to come out, but Johnny can’t do more than guess it’s supposed to be something like “get back” before the noise is reduced to animal snarling, lips pulled back to show rows and rows of sharp-looking teeth. Johnny backs up until he hits his desk, reaching behind himself as if touching the counter and knocking over all of his pens and pencils is somehow going to help.</p><p>In the drunk tank, the human-height <em>wolf</em> gives a tremendous shake and the remnants of what looks like Mark’s supposedly favorite jeans slap to the floor of the cell. Johnny looks at them and almost starts laughing, until the wolf seems to notice them too and levels Johnny a look that somehow seems accusatory.</p><p>Finally, Johnny manages to find his voice. “What the <em>fuck</em> just happened?” he says, more a whisper than anything, and the wolf—given that it is… <em>a wolf</em>—just sorts of huffs at him from its place in the cage.</p><p>It doesn’t look particularly murderous. Granted, a few minutes prior it had been a guy from Toronto, but at present it’s quite nearly as tall as Johnny and massive enough that it could definitely take down the doors to the drunk tank should it decide it wants to eat him. He doesn’t know who to thank for the fact that it’s <em>not</em> doing that, but he sends out a small prayer anyway, even as he does his best to become one with his desk.</p><p>“Good… wolf,” he says slowly. “Nice… wolf.”</p><p>The wolf stares at him with glowing eyes and—Johnny nearly swears—seems to wag its tail?</p><p>Johnny really has no idea what to do with any of that. Johnny has no idea if he is capable of full sentences. Johnny presses back harder like he’s going to be able to go through his desk and stares at the <em>giant wolf in the jail cell</em>, certain he is losing his goddamn mind.</p><p>“Williams?” he manages, remembering suddenly that he’s <em>not alone</em>—there are other cops in the station with him who have to be witnessing this. But when Johnny looks, when he manages to rip his eyes away from the giant, hulking wolf, it’s to find the rest of the people in the precinct frozen solid. All of them are as they’d been before Mark turned into a wolf—Williams seated at his desk with his gaze on his phone looking absolutely unaffected—and Johnny has a moment of <em>pure unadulterated panic</em>, before he realizes that the man is still breathing. And then he notices the other man, standing directly behind Williams and raising from a crouch, lips perched right next to the shell of William’s right ear.</p><p>In a blink the stranger is across the room and standing directly in front of Johnny, icy gaze piercing in its intensity.</p><p>Johnny yelps.</p><p>“Now, now, Officer Suh, none of that,” the man says, his tone as cool as the rest of him, and Johnny blinks up at him in stunned panic. “<em>Be quiet</em>,” the man continues, without so much as a glance to the wolf at his back. The wolf at his back. The wolf at his—he’s put his <em>back</em> to the <em>wolf</em>—the giant, snarling, clearly pissed off <em>wolf</em>—but he doesn’t seem concerned. “<em>Sit down</em>,” he tells Johnny, instead. “<em>Forget any of this ever happened</em>.”</p><p>Johnny’s head starts fucking pounding, but he sits when and where directed, almost before he can help himself. In the background, the wolf continues growling, a deep rumbling noise that Johnny feels in the center of his chest.</p><p>“<em>There</em> you are,” the man says, appearing in front of the bars and regarding the wolf—the fucking <em>wolf</em>—with utter calm. “This is starting to become a pattern, Mark-yah.”</p><p>Johnny’s brain reboots enough to recognize that the man is calling the wolf “Mark” and also, he’s speaking Korean, but not enough to move from where he’s seated in his chair.</p><p>“You’re much less angry than you were last time, though,” continues the man, as the wolf looks at him and keeps growling. Its lips pull back to show off its teeth, and they’re just as terrifying as they were the first time Johnny saw them and then some. “Yah, none of that,” the man says, almost like he’s chastising a pet. “<em>Behave</em>.” The word seems to reverberate around the entire precinct, but the wolf only lowers its head and whines.</p><p>The headache continues to throb behind Johnny’s temples, yet somehow he manages to clear his throat. He’s a fucking police officer. A stranger has just barged in and is now standing <em>way too close</em> to the giant fucking wolf. Johnny needs to do something. “Hey!” His voice cracks in the middle, but sounds come out.</p><p>The stranger doesn’t so much as glance at Johnny, though. Instead, he reaches out with one pale hand to touch the bars of the drunk tank, skimming his fingertips against the metal like he expects to be burned or something.</p><p>Johnny has only a few moments to think that odd, before the threat of being responsible for some civilian’s mauling snaps him right out of it. “Hey, watch out!” he near-shouts, striding up out of his seat and grabbing the man by the hand so that he can yank him away from the bars—and the wolf. “It might bite you!” The man is shockingly cold to touch, but Johnny doesn’t flinch, just keeps walking until they’re a much safer distance away from the bars.</p><p>The wolf whines, the sound oddly reminiscent of the dogs Johnny’s neighbor had when he was growing up, but Johnny ignores it in favor of the civilian he saved from potential mauling.</p><p>“He,” the stranger says—in English to match Johnny’s words, before sliding right back into Korean. “And he won’t.”</p><p>Johnny blinks, the language-change making his head hurt even more.</p><p>“Sorry,” the man says. “Do you not—I just assumed—”</p><p>“No, I speak Korean,” Johnny says in Korean, even though he feels rusty and suddenly very self-conscious about it. He realizes he’s still holding the man’s hand and lets it go. “Sorry.”</p><p>The man stares down where his hand has been left extended between them, smoothing one thumb along his palm curiously. Then he smiles, and Johnny feels… lightheaded, for some reason.</p><p>“It’s no problem,” says the man. Johnny gets the sense that until now, he had not been given the man’s full attention. “Now<em> how much do I have to pay you to make you forget this ever happened</em>?”</p><p>Johnny… blinks. His headache seems to increase tenfold. His train of thought nearly derails. In the back of his mind, he notices that the wolf’s growls have started right back up, which is enough of a reality check that he’s able to shake off the sudden stupor after only a pause. “What?” he says. In the drunk tank, the wolf’s eyes seem fixed on Johnny’s, and Johnny takes another flinching step back, further dunked in metaphorical ice water.</p><p>For two seconds the man just <em>stares </em>at Johnny, almost as if he’s trying to climb inside him, but then he seems to compose himself, reaching into his coat pocket and producing a checkbook. <em>A fucking checkbook in 2023</em>, Johnny thinks somewhat hysterically, certain this is all a very realistic dream. The man’s coat looks like it’s fucking <em>Burberry</em> and so soft that Johnny’s envious.</p><p>“Three-thousand?” the man says, suddenly holding a pen to the paper. He looks amused, although Johnny can’t imagine why. “Four-thousand? Seven?”</p><p>Johnny is still having trouble putting sentences together, let along conceiving of that amount of money. “What?” he says again.</p><p>“Ten-thousand?” says the man. “Mark-yah”—he raises his voice as if to be heard, directing his words into the drunk tank—“Are you happy I’ve kept it under twenty grand this time? Your friendship is so fucking <em>expensive</em>, and I am <em>immortal</em>.”</p><p>Johnny feels the nervous laughter start bubbling up in his chest again, and this time he’s not sure he’s going to be able to contain it. “This time?” he says. And then adds, “Sorry—did you say <em>immortal</em>?” He pauses, thoughts swirling together frantically, trying to make sense of everything. “Wait is <em>that</em> why Rogers bought a <em>Rolex </em>last month? And suddenly had enough money to go on a surprise vacation?”</p><p>“Ten thousand it is,” says the man, ignoring all of Johnny’s questions. He signs the check with a flourish and hands it over.</p><p>Johnny reads it with his heart in his mouth, stunned. The man has signed the check <em>Jeong Yuno</em> and written the words <em>for your discretion</em> on the memo line, and Johnny looks up at this supposed Jeong Yuno and blinks. “What—”</p><p>“We’ll be going now,” Jeong Yuno says, appearing in front of the drunk tank holding the keys in the time it takes Johnny to fucking blink. “The footage has been looping since you locked Mark in here, so don’t worry about having to explain to your coworkers. They’ll wake up in a moment.” He pauses as if thinking, and then says, in a similar voice to before, “<em>In ten minutes, wake up and remember nothing—tonight was completely and totally normal. The kid in the drunk tank sobered up and went home</em>.” Then he swings the cell door open as if he isn’t letting out a <em>giant fucking wolf</em>, and Johnny doesn’t know what to do with himself.</p><p>“You can’t—” he starts to say, although very clearly Jeong Yuno <em>can</em>, because the wolf lumbers out through the bars without pause, somehow managing to squeeze itself free with minimal fuss. It stops once it’s through, standing next to Jeong Yuno almost like a rather docile dog, and it doesn’t even look at Johnny once.</p><p>At some point Jeong Yuno goes into the cage to retrieve what remains of Mark’s clothes and also his glasses, which Johnny notices are still sitting innocuously on the bench inside the drunk tank. As Johnny watches, Jeong Yuno hooks the eyewear into a pocket on his coat and steps back out of the cell. The wolf gently wags its tail.</p><p>“It was nice meeting you, Johnny-hyung,” says Jeong Yuno politely in Korean. “The answer to eighty-five down is ‘Millennium.’” With that, he walks blithely out the doors with the wolf in tow.</p><p>Johnny stares after them both with his mouth open, then looks down at the check for ten thousand dollars in his hand, and swallows. A few minutes later Williams lifts his head from his phone, and doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that Johnny’s arrest from before is glaringly absent. “The kid sobered up and went home?” is he all he says, and Johnny can tell he’s not expecting an answer.</p><p>“Uh, yeah,” Johnny says anyway, and shoves the check into the pocket of his pants.</p>
<hr/><p>Johnny does his best to put the wolf out of his mind. He gets home by six in the morning and falls face first into his blankets without even bothering to strip out of his uniform, waking three hours later when his phone starts yelling at him and his stomach demands that he eat something <em>or else</em>. Johnny fires off a text to his parents wishing them a Happy Fourth of July and also to Stephanie, wishing her a Fuck You for Changing My Alarm Tone. His mother replies with an excess of heart emojis and Stephanie sends him a similar amount of laughing emojis, and Johnny sets down his phone feeling loved.</p><p>He’s doing a good job not thinking about the wolf. He’s normal on the subway, normal for the first half of lunch with Stephanie, and even manages to trade a few work stories without much fuss. It’s only once his ex-girlfriend-turned-best-friend starts to talk about how it sucks that Johnny had to work on July 3 that Johnny even mentions it—and even that isn’t more than a rushed comment.</p><p>“Last night I arrested this guy for being almost naked in Central Park, and he turned into a wolf in the jail cell,” Johnny says, right in the middle of Stephanie’s commentary about how her birthday is a week off and she’s very excited for all the presents Johnny didn’t clear with her in advance.</p><p>Stephanie pauses, then leans down to take a sip of her drink. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Run that by me again?”</p><p>Johnny glances around the boba shop like anyone is going to bother listening to their conversation and switches languages like some sort of man on the run. “Last night,” he says in careful Korean. “I arrested this guy for indecent exposure”—he doesn’t know the Korean words for any of that so he has to settle for the English and Stephanie’s brow furrows—“and he turned into a wolf in the jail cell.”</p><p>Stephanie pulls off of her straw and stares at him for two long seconds. “Right,” she says, thankfully also in Korean. “I just wanted to make sure I’d heard you correctly before I gave you hell.”</p><p>“I know—it was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” says Johnny, before what she’s said catches up with him and he pauses. “What?”</p><p>“I know yesterday was the full moon, Youngho-oppa,” says Stephanie, going back to take another sip of her boba and picking up her napkin with her left hand. “You think you’re very clever but you’re not.”</p><p>“You—I—yesterday was the <em>what</em>?” Johnny’s brain is already hurtling down the tracks. He’s not exactly culturally enlightened but he likes to think he knows basic pop culture, and there’s only one creature that turns into a wolf on the night of the full moon, and Johnny’s pretty sure it <em>isn’t fucking real</em>.</p><p>“The full moon?” Stephanie repeats the sentence in English just to hammer the nail into Johnny’s coffin even harder. “You can just tell me you had a boring night, and it wasn’t worth you ditching me to get paid.”</p><p>“No—I—<em>Jihyun</em>,” Johnny whines, pulling out the big guns.</p><p>Stephanie just slurps her boba extra loudly and stares at him, unbothered.</p><p>“The guy turned into a <em>wolf</em>—”</p><p>“Yes, you said—and I said it was funny—”</p><p>“I’m being serious!”</p><p>Stephanie lowers her drink again. “Youngho, there’s no such thing as werewolves. Men don’t turn into wolves.”</p><p>“Well, this one did!” Johnny says. “And he did it in a police station so there’s got to be footage—” The final thing Jeong Yuno said to him comes rushing back to Johnny in a wave. Something about the tape looping and no one being any the wiser before he helped with Johnny’s crossword puzzle. “I’ve got to go,” Johnny says, thrusting what’s left of his own boba towards Stephanie and standing. He pats down both pockets making sure he’s got his phone and wallet, aware he’s in plain clothes and nowhere near the precinct. It’s Fourth of July, and Johnny is probably going to die of heatstroke on the subway just trying to get there.</p><p>“Youngho. Johnny,” says Stephanie, mouth open as she stares at him. “What—”</p><p>“There’s cameras,” Johnny says, bending to press a quick kiss to her cheek in apology. “And”—he gestures pointlessly with both hands—“I’ve got to go. Love you! Happy Birthday!”</p><p>“It’s in two weeks,” says Stephanie, but Johnny is already halfway across the shop on his way.</p><p>“I’m not getting you shoes!” he shouts over his shoulder, and then the moment he’s out the doors, he <em>walks.</em></p>
<hr/><p>The first person Johnny sees when he hurtles through the doors to the precinct several minutes later is Rogers, who got tasked with covering the Fourth of July because of that very sudden cruise she went on the month before. Johnny looks at where the woman is seated at her desk eating her lunch and reading a cookbook for barely a second—long enough to note she’s just as tanned as he remembers her being when she got back from her trip.</p><p>“Rogers! Hey!” he calls as he rushes past, heading for the computer at his desk with his pulse thundering in his ears. Mark Lee. Mark Lee, Mark Lee, Mark Lee—there it is, Mark Lee, logged into the system at five after midnight on July 4, arresting officer John Jun Suh.</p><p>“John,” says Rogers, after a moment’s pause. “Hi.”</p><p>Johnny waves one hand at her, closing out of Mark’s record with his heart racing. “Hey—is Everett in his office, do you know? I need to see last night’s footage of the drunk tank.”</p><p>Rogers sets down her cookbook and gets to her feet, strolling across the precinct to stand beside him. “Yes,” she says. “Why do you need to look at the footage?”</p><p>“Just”—Johnny is touched to see that she’s following him towards the watch commander’s office anyway—“I need to check something.” He makes it two more steps before he turns back around. “The urine test,” he says. “I almost forgot.”</p><p>Rogers blinks at him. “Johnny—”</p><p>“Did it come back with the presence of drugs? Surely it came back with the presence of drugs—” But it didn’t—the report on Johnny’s desk explains that Mark didn’t test positive for any of the usual suspects, and is completely and totally clean. Johnny wonders if he should send the lab his own urine sample. </p><p>“<em>John</em>,” says Rogers.</p><p>“I’m fine,” lies Johnny. “You said Everett was in his office?”</p><p>Everett pulls the footage once Rogers asks him for it, glancing briefly at Johnny like he’s a live bomb, but Johnny just crowds in as close as he feels confident in getting to wait for the time stamp to hit quarter of.</p><p>“I just need… to check something,” he mutters.</p><p>Rogers and Everett exchange a look, but Johnny pays them both no mind. They’ll understand once they see. He waits, barely breathing, until he sees himself come into frame with one hand on Mark’s arm as he unlocks and opens the door and puts the man in the drunk tank. Everett puts the recording on double speed without waiting to be asked, and Johnny watches it with his bottom lip between his teeth. Nothing happens. Mark doesn’t turn into a giant wolf, Jeong Yuno doesn’t show up to pay Johnny off, and yet the footage doesn’t even look doctored.</p><p>Johnny stares at the screen and <em>does not understand</em>, even as on-screen Johnny gets up to let on-screen Mark out of the drunk tank and send him on his way. Everett waits for on-screen Johnny to close the drunk tank, before he diligently hits pause on the video. Johnny feels like the entire precinct is spinning.</p><p>“Johnny,” says Rogers finally. “Was that what you were looking for? Just that guy from yesterday?”</p><p>Johnny glances between Rogers and the computer, two seconds from a nervous breakdown. “This is just a man sitting in a jail cell,” he says more than a little desperately.</p><p>Rogers glances briefly at Everett. “Yep,” she says. “Sometimes they do that. Alex—thanks. Happy Fourth!” She takes Johnny by the shoulder and practically hauls him out of Everett’s office with the man’s grumbling eye-rolling as background noise.</p><p>Johnny is going to check himself in at the nearest hospital. “No, you don’t understand,” he tells Rogers. “I was there and he—he didn’t just sit—he <em>turned into a wolf</em>—” He says the final part of that sentence in a very hushed whisper, and Rogers tilts her head at him, obviously not having heard.</p><p>“What? Johnny.” She reaches out to touch Johnny on the forehead like he might have a fever, and her hands are startlingly cold. “You should go home and get some sleep,” she says. “Enjoy the parade and nice weather. I’ve heard you’ve been pulling the night shift all weekend. That’s bound to fuck up your head.”</p><p>“No… I…” protests Johnny, but he’s starting to see the logic in her statements.</p><p>Rogers gives Johnny’s cheek a gentle pat, then claps him on the shoulder. “Go home,” she says. “Don’t show your ugly mug in here until you’ve had more than five hours of sleep.” She pauses. “And have had a shower.”</p><p>Johnny gives himself an involuntary sniff. “Excuse you,” he says. “I slept three hours last night.”</p><p>“Oh, excuse me.” Rogers plops back down in her chair and picks up her cookbook. “Now get out, Rookie.”</p><p>Johnny flips her off because that’s the rapport they have with one another and leaves before she gets up and makes him. He decides to walk an extra block to the nearest subway station, and the fresh air—while not all that much cooler than down in the subway—does wonders for his outlook. Johnny probably hallucinated the wolf thing. Or had a weird dream. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Of course once he gets home, the ten thousand dollar check from Jeong Yuno for his discretion is still tucked into his sock drawer… but that’s… Johnny’s just not going to think about that. It’s the only way to keep him from sticking his head out his apartment window and screaming until his throat goes raw.</p>
<hr/><p>Two days later, Johnny is in line at Starbucks waiting for his turn to order a coffee when none other than Mark Lee walks into the store, accompanied by Jeong Yuno. Neither of them get in line for their own coffees, instead making a beeline to the only open booth. Johnny watches them walk by with his mouth fallen open, phone forgotten in his palm. Jeong Yuno sits on the side of the table facing Johnny and Mark gets in the side facing away, and Johnny stares extra hard at the back of Mark’s head like it’s going to suddenly sprout wolf ears. The woman in front of him takes a step forward, and Johnny barely manages to follow suit. He’s last in line. If Mark or Yuno get up and join the queue, they’ll have to stand directly behind Johnny. Johnny’s not sure if he’s going to be able to handle that.</p><p>“Sorry.” The girl at the head of the line nearly walks into Johnny on her way past carrying an entire tray of coffees, and Johnny just smiles at her and sidesteps out of her way. This is why he misses it when Mark gets up to get in line—Johnny looks back at the table like some sort of addict trying to get a fix and meets only Jeong Yuno’s eyes. The man doesn’t so much as blink at him, zero recognition in his eyes.</p><p>Johnny swallows around his tongue and faces forward, counting to five—fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, <em>fuck</em>—and then turns his head around to face Mark Lee.</p><p>Mark Lee blinks back at him, cheeks a very faint pink. “Oh, um, hi, Officer Suh,” he says in English.</p><p>Johnny drags his eyes away from Mark’s own to trace down the bridge of his nose, past his—admittedly—pretty mouth, to the skin of his collarbones. He’s wearing a loose-fitting t-shirt and shorts; his feet are exposed in flip-flops. The skin of his legs is mostly blemish free—save a few scratches that Johnny cannot attribute to… werewolf… ism—</p><p>“Mark, hi,” he says, before his thoughts can go entirely off the rails. “Uh… fancy seeing you here.”</p><p>“Yeah.” Mark smiles back at him, more than a little shy.</p><p>The line moves forward another person, and Johnny takes a long stride and somehow doesn’t fall flat on his face. He stares at the menu, even though he has a regular order and doesn’t need to. He decides to think about what to get for lunch instead. He doesn’t glance back over his shoulder at Mark Lee, who turned into a wolf two nights ago.</p><p>“Sorry about being drunk,” Mark says, at the same time Johnny gives up on normalcy and turns to face him.</p><p>“Listen, I’m not going to tell anyone about your whole”—he covers his teeth with his lips so that the next word comes out distorted—“<em>werewolf</em> situation but respectfully, what the fuck?”</p><p>Mark just blinks at him. “I’m sorry what?” he says.</p><p>Johnny glances around the Starbucks and decides he’s better off using Korean. “Your <em>werewolf situation</em>,” he says. He knows he’s used the right word; he looked up the Korean word for werewolf and everything.</p><p>Mark keeps looking blankly at him. “Werewolf?” he says after a short pause. “Like… the game? Mafia, or whatever?”</p><p>Johnny is losing his mind. “Right,” he says.</p><p>Mark tilts his head.</p><p>“I don’t suppose…” Johnny takes another two steps forward, almost to the front of the line. “What do you think happened on Monday? Humor me.”</p><p>Mark moves so that they’re standing almost next to each other. “You arrested me for being drunk and a nuisance,” he says. “I think I was going to swim in the reservoir, maybe. Or the lake.”</p><p>Johnny blinks furiously as his mind throws up a map of the park for his viewing pleasure, noting that the lake is closer to the butterfly gardens than the reservoir, but neither of them are exactly… within viewing distance.</p><p>Despite his silence, Mark smiles at him again. “Anyway, thanks for being so nice about the whole thing.”</p><p>Johnny is… <em>losing his mind</em>. “Sure thing!” Is his voice high and squeaky? Johnny thinks his voice is high and squeaky. The line moves again, and Johnny reaches the counter. He orders his coffee and his sandwich without thinking about anything else, manages to smile at Mark as he leaves to find his own seat within the Starbucks, and puts in his headphones the moment he sits down.</p><p>Two bites of sandwich and three sips of coffee later, Johnny gives in to the inevitable, digs his phone out of his pocket, and opens his text messages with his mom. The last thing in their message thread is her wishing him a happy Thursday and him replying that he loves her, and for the three seconds it takes Johnny to read them both, he misses her and Northbrooke like an ache in his side. He should call her, and not just text. She’ll probably want him to speak Korean, and Johnny knows at least Yuno speaks Korean… but the place is busy and there’s no way they’re going to hear him.</p><p>Still. Johnny checks as surreptitiously as he can and is startled to see that Mark and Yuno’s booth is empty, the two of them having left sometime when Johnny was busy listening to Millennium’s latest song. (They’re with SM, and SM was the first company to turn Johnny down, so he’d never have had any opportunity to meet any of them, but they’re good, and Johnny totally isn’t listening to them because of the crossword.)</p><p>Buoyed, Johnny hits call and lets the ringing interrupt his music, clicking back into his messages to send Stephanie a photo of two pigeons he saw this morning as he waits for it to go through.</p><p>His mother answers on the third ring. “My son, John-ah!” she says.</p><p>“Mom,” Johnny greets. “Am I interrupting you? You’re not too busy?”</p><p>“I’m never busy for my son,” his mom says, then adds, “I’m on my lunch break.”</p><p>“Oh, me too.” Johnny takes another bite of his sandwich and chews. “You and Dad are well? Healthy?”</p><p>“Healthy,” his mom confirms. “And you? You’re sleeping?”</p><p>Johnny thinks about his three hours of sleep and winces. “When I can,” he says.</p><p>“Youngho,” his mom says.</p><p>“I’ll try harder?” Johnny tries.</p><p>“What about food?” his mother continues, politely choosing not to force the issue. “Are you eating well? Do you need me to send you more?”</p><p>Johnny thinks about the last time he treated himself to his mom’s home cooking and swallows his suddenly ashy tasting sandwich. “No?” he says finally. He’s about as convincing as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.</p><p>“I’ll make you your favorites this weekend,” says his mom. “Now.” Her tone changes and Johnny wishes he was home and he could climb into her lap, despite the fact that he no longer fits. “What have you called me about? Things are okay with work? With your friends?” His mom pauses. “You and Jihyun haven’t decided to try again, have you?”</p><p>Johnny snorts, flicking to his messages with Stephanie to fire off a quick, <kbd>Called my mom. Two minutes in and she’s already asking if we’re getting married.</kbd> “No, Mom, I’m not marrying Stephanie,” he says.</p><p>His mom makes a noise of disappointment, but doesn’t say anything else about it—progress, and a testament to how many times they’ve had this conversation.</p><p>“You haven’t met anyone special… a new boy, perhaps?”</p><p>That too is progress, and Johnny feels warmth curl in his belly. “I haven’t met anyone else, Mom,” he says. Although… Mark Lee had been very, very pretty. Before he turned into a wolf. At which point he was just scary. Johnny taps his foot, the memory of why he made this call in the first place disrupting the ease of hearing his mother’s voice. “Mom… if I told you I thought some guy I arrested was a werewolf… what would you say?”</p><p>Saying it out loud makes Johnny’s feel the most ridiculous he’s felt since Monday, but it’s also a little bit of a relief to have it out there in the open. And no matter the end result, his mom’s going to be honest and upfront with him. She’s the smartest person Johnny knows barring none, and whatever advice she has will be worth taking. Even if it is telling him to see a doctor and that she’ll be on the next flight out of O’Hare.</p><p>“Youngho.” His mom’s tone is a little strange, but Johnny doesn’t think that’s a bad thing. “Is this because yesterday was the full moon?”</p><p>Johnny frowns down at his sandwich. “Does <em>everyone</em> know that except me?” he says. “Is this some sort of thing because you’re both women and like… periods?” His cheeks feel warm but he didn’t live with Stephanie for two years when they were both broke and fresh out of Columbia not to be able to handle this much—he bought the girl tampons, for God’s sake.</p><p>“Periods,” his mother says, sounding utterly amused.</p><p>“Cause like… the moon,” says Johnny. “Shut up—don’t look at me like that.”</p><p>“I’m not looking at you like anything; I’m in Chicago and you are in New York.”</p><p>“Please don’t remind me.” Johnny misses her so, so, so much. “When are Dad and you coming to visit again?”</p><p>“Maybe over Christmas,” his mom says promptly. “Although that depends on if you’ve moved out of that place you call a home—you should just come to see us instead. We’d be happy to buy you a ticket.”</p><p>“Thanks Mom, but I’d rather pay my own way,” Johnny says, even though most of his paycheck goes to staying housed in New York fucking City, even if he does live in a shitty one-bedroom apartment in Queens. He clears his throat. “But, uh, what I was saying before, about… werewolves?”</p><p>“Werewolves aren’t real, Youngho-yah,” his mother says, in the exact no-nonsense tone Johnny needed to hear. The tone she’d used to tell him the rules of the world, even if they were only really for the home she’d made for him and subject to change as soon as he’d gotten old enough to both discover the existence of chocolate and bargain his way out of mowing the lawn. “You don’t need me to tell you that.”</p><p>“No,” Johnny says, first hesitantly, and then with more force. “No—I don’t.” Werewolves aren’t real. Mark Lee had been drunkenly attempting to go skinny dipping and Johnny had fallen asleep in the precinct and had a weird nightmare; he’d seen the full moon on his calendar on work, probably, and the rest of it had been his imagination. Mark’s friend wasn’t really named Jeong Yuno. Jeong Yuno was some name Johnny’s subconscious had made up, or something—maybe he’d heard it on the subway or seen it in a magazine.</p><p>Johnny should take his mother and Rogers’ advice and get some much-needed sleep, and not check his sock drawer yet again to see if the check for ten thousand dollars is still there.</p><p>Johnny checks the time and tells his mother he loves her, before shoving the rest of his sandwich into his mouth and heading back the way he’d come.</p><p>He doesn’t check his sock drawer that evening, or the next.</p><p>He chalks the whole thing up to an overactive subconscious and goes about his business, walking his beat, celebrating Stephanie’s twenty-eighth birthday, fending off an excess shipment of food from his mother (that he does actually really, really want), and generally forgetting about the whole Mark Lee situation.</p><p>He looks up when the next full moon is—August 1, 2023—and tells himself as long as nothing strange happens on that night—no reports of streaking, animal sightings, animal <em>attacks</em>, etc.—his life can go back to normal.</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
<h4>Tuesday, August 1, 2023<br/>
The Sturgeon Moon</h4><p> </p>
<hr/><p>On August 1—sometime past midnight, so really August 2, then—Johnny gets a call on his radio that someone’s been spotted streaking near Belvedere Castle, of all places. Johnny spends precious moments simply staring at his radio, trying to get his heart to stop pounding. He goes through the motions of checking his phone for when the next full moon is and stands there with his breath starting to come shallowly when Google informs him that he was right! It is actually tonight, August 1, 2023! Johnny reads the sentence about how the August full moon is called the Sturgeon Moon almost on autopilot, before his radio buzzes to life again, and Williams barks at him asking if he’s on his way to taking the call.</p><p>“Yeah—I—yeah,” Johnny says to the crackling response of Williams’ staticky “good!” and then somehow puts one foot in front of the other.</p><p>It’s probably nothing. It’s probably just someone out running, or something, and not real streaking. Or maybe it is real streaking, and Johnny will get to book someone for indecent exposure—threaten to put them on the registry and everything. Maybe it will even be a false report… there’s no reason to assume it’s Mark Lee, the not-college student<em>.</em></p><p>Johnny hates that he still remembers Mark Lee’s name—hates that he’s still got a check for ten grand hidden in his sock drawer from Jeong Yuno—but he hates even more that he’s even entertaining that this might be about Mark Lee. Sure, the moon was full on July 3 and the moon is also full <em>tonight</em> and sure, Johnny used the internet to learn all sorts of horrifying things about werewolves that are making his palms sweat and his stomach turn itself into knots, but all of that was fiction. <em>Not real</em>.</p><p>This call… it’s reality.</p><p>And it’s going to be perfectly normal.</p><p>Even though the supposed streaker was tall, thin, and could have been in college, with dark hair. “The woman said she thought she’d seen him out there before, so it might be a repeat offender,” Williams had clarified, after giving the description that could have been Mark Lee.</p><p>Johnny keeps walking, telling himself everything is totally under control.</p><p>When he arrives at Belvedere Castle, no one is in plain sight, and for two seconds Johnny imagines leaving. Then he shuts his eyes, counts to ten, and opens them again. Still nothing. Just a surprisingly peaceful castle, mostly covered in shadows. The moon passes out from behind a convenient cloud almost as if it’s mocking him and dips the whole place in silver.</p><p>The Sturgeon Moon is named for the sturgeon fish that are mostly caught on the Great Lakes in August, according to the Forbes article Johnny didn’t click on. Johnny focuses on the morbid fascination with which he’d regarded photographs of said humongous fish, instead of thinking about anything else.</p><p>Something makes a noise—a snapping branch; probably just local wildlife, and nothing more.</p><p>Johnny counts to ten once more and goes out on a limb. “You can come out, Mark, it’s me!” he calls. For five long seconds Johnny starts to worry he’s fucked up and this is a whole other situation, but then there’s a shuffling noise and Mark steps out from the wood surrounding Belvedere Castle. He comes up onto the wall built around the area Johnny is standing in, before leaping deftly back onto solid ground. Johnny stares at Mark’s bare, surprisingly clean feet, and feels his grip on reality start to falter.</p><p>“Hey,” Mark says, once he’s finished shuffling into sight. “I mean. Hello. Officer Suh.”</p><p>Johnny just keeps looking at him, trying not to think too hard about the bright blip of the Sturgeon Moon that he can see in the too-clear sky.</p><p>“I can explain,” Mark says after a long pause. “Um… about my… almost nudity.”</p><p>Johnny feels himself start to go right over the cliff, even as he takes in the boxers Mark’s got on this time. Surely whoever called this in could see them—they’re bright fucking lime green, even if they do seem to have some sort of pattern. “Let me guess,” Johnny says slowly. “You thought you’d try your hand at swimming again.”</p><p>Mark raises both his shoulders and manages a grin. “Actually… I’m a werewolf,” he says, like this isn’t world-changing information. “Um… but I’ve got it under control, so you don’t have to arrest me this time—”</p><p>Johnny starts to hear elevator music in his brain. “Right,” he says. “Because I… arrested you last time… and I put you in the drunk tank last time… and you… left the precinct as a wolf.”</p><p>“As a werewolf,” Mark corrects. “And technically I entered the precinct as a werewolf too.”</p><p>“Right,” Johnny says again. “That.”</p><p>For two long moments, they just stare at each other—one of them dressed in full uniform, and one of them wearing bright green boxers, smiling like this isn’t the weirdest situation Johnny’s ever been in. Finally, Johnny manages to break the silence. “Couldn’t you do this somewhere else?” he says, feeling like he’s having an out of body experience. “Like… somewhere <em>other</em> than Central Park?”</p><p>Mark opens his mouth to answer, but Johnny’s brain has started dissecting his last sentence like a medical examiner would a corpse.</p><p>“Oh my God,” he says. “You’re a werewolf, and you run wild in Central Park.”</p><p>Mark’s mouth opens again. “Well—”</p><p>“You’re a werewolf and you run wild in <em>Central Park</em>,” Johnny repeats, horror icing his veins. “You—you were almost as tall as me—”</p><p>“Really—I mean Jaehyun-hyung always says I’m huge and I’ve seen pictures but—”</p><p>“—you could <em>definitely</em> have eaten me—”</p><p>“Hey, I wouldn’t eat <em>you</em>—don’t <em>say</em> that—”</p><p>“—you’re running wild in Central Park!”</p><p>“I don’t run wild in Central Park,” Mark interrupts, the words registering this time for Johnny because Mark sounds actually insulted. “I take precautions!”</p><p>Johnny’s too busy pacing in anxious circles, still muttering under his breath about how Mark is a werewolf who roams around New York City <em>under his nose</em>.</p><p>“Hey!” Mark raises his voice even more. “Johnny-hyung!”</p><p>Johnny’s head comes up at the Korean address, memories of his mother using that exact same tone on him flashing to the forefront of his mind.</p><p>“I do not run wild in Central Park!” Mark’s still going in Korean. “I take precautions!” He gestures with both hands at the end of that sentence, which has the unfortunate benefit of exposing him to the entire world, since the boxers he’s chosen this month are much more form fitting—almost as if they’re a size too small.</p><p>Johnny finds himself involuntarily glancing down at Mark’s surprisingly well-sized bulge before he manages to force his gaze back onto Mark’s suddenly flushing face. “What sort of precautions?” he says, voice unbearably high. At least his Korean sounds passable.</p><p>“Good ones,” Mark hisses, at the same time the man from before—Jeong Yuno—emerges from the depths of Belvedere Castle like he’s some sort of silent nightmare.</p><p>“That would be me—I’m the precaution,” he says, and this time, there is no pretending he doesn’t know Johnny. He’s dressed in something expensive and terribly at odds with his near-naked companion, but he’s forgone the coat this time for a long sleeve shirt and jeans. It’s his skin that catches Johnny’s attention though—that plus the necklace, which is ornamental and a little tacky and inlaid all over with tiny rubies. As Johnny looks, Yuno very carefully tucks the necklace into his collar, hiding it from view. He’s got a matching ring on his wedding finger with an equally impressive red jewel, so Johnny doesn’t know who he thinks he’s fooling. But that’s not important, because Jeong Yuno <em>clearly recognizes Johnny</em>.</p><p>Johnny is going to have <em>words</em>. “You!” he starts with, pointing at Yuno. “And <em>you</em>!” He swings on Mark, striding forward so that he can punch the man hard in the bare arm. “You—you—you <em>gaslit me</em>!” He has to look down as he does so, and finally notices that Mark’s lime green boxers are patterned all over with tiny yellow crescent moons. “You’re wearing boxers with the moon on them!”</p><p>Mark rubs where Johnny’s hit him and glances down at his underwear with a wince. “Ah, yeah,” he says. “Jaehyun-hyung got them for me.”</p><p>They’re all still speaking Korean, but Johnny doesn’t care. “What are you?” he addresses Yuno—Jaehyun?—and doesn’t wait for a response. “I’m assuming you’re not a werewolf too since you didn’t turn into a wolf last month.” Once he finishes speaking, he glares around at both of them, daring one of them to try to correct him. Neither of them do, and Johnny mentally punches the air, before mentally curling up in a screaming, terrified ball.</p><p>“No,” Yuno-Jaehyun says after a small pause. “I’m not a werewolf, no.” He’s looking at Johnny like Johnny should be able to guess what sort of supernatural creature he is, but Johnny doesn’t have the time for this bullshit.</p><p>“Well what are you?” he asks, since he figures it’s best to do it quickly, as he would rip off a band aid or set a bone. He doesn’t have to think very hard to produce options. “A zombie? A ghost?” He swallows, the paleness of the man’s skin suddenly the only thing he can notice. “A… a…”</p><p>Yuno-Jaehyun simply raises one perfect eyebrow, stepping further from the shadows with near-silent grace. “A,” he prompts.</p><p>Johnny nearly pees himself. It’s something about Yuno-Jaehyun’s voice. The way the timber of it is bone chilling despite the casualness. His shirt has a tiny alligator on the breast pocket, but this time Johnny doesn’t think about the brand behind the clothing, too busy being unnerved by the glow of his eyes in the darkness. Yuno-Jaehyun’s irises reflect light—like a cat, or any other nocturnal animal with a tapetum lucidum, built for maximum sight in the dark.</p><p>“You—” Johnny says. “Jeong Yuno… ssi.”</p><p>“Jaehyun,” offers Yuno-Jaehyun—Jaehyun. “Nobody calls me ‘Yuno’ anymore unless I’ve been particularly bad.”</p><p>The hairs on Johnny’s arms stand up. “You’re the precaution,” he manages to say.</p><p>Jaehyun nods.</p><p>“But you’re just—”</p><p>Jaehyun’s head tilts. “Just what, Johnny-hyung?”</p><p>“One person,” Johnny finishes, feeling like he’s been dropped into the deep end twice over in less than ten minutes. “How can you—” Johnny breaks off because he doesn’t know how to finish that sentence.</p><p>“Control a werewolf?” Jaehyun ends it for him. “Well, Johnny-hyung.” He’s been speaking Korean this entire time and Johnny has only just noticed that his diction reminds him more of his grandparents, instead of someone who’s young enough to be calling Johnny “hyung.” “That would be because I’m not just a person.”</p><p>Johnny swallows. “Sure,” he says. “And what are you, then?” He forces air into his lungs. “A—a—vam—”</p><p>“A vampire?” The moon disappears behind another cloud and Jaehyun’s face falls into shadow. He steps closer and his eyes come back into glinting focus, and Johnny gets a perfect view as his lips pull back into a smile to reveal—</p><p>“Fangs,” Johnny manages, staring at the sharp points of Jaehyun’s canines and finally figuring out that the thing that unsettles him about the man—the vampire—is that he doesn’t ever <em>breathe</em>. “You’re a—”</p><p>“I’m stronger than Mark is,” Jaehyun says. “So I keep him in line. Also, he can’t kill me, or turn me into a werewolf.”</p><p>Johnny hadn’t even thought about that bit of werewolf mythology—the part where they bite humans and turn them into other werewolves—but now it’s all he <em>can</em> think about, the memory of wolf-Mark’s massive teeth unwillingly superimposing itself over human-Mark’s normal mouth and face. He looks away from Jaehyun with a nervous laugh.</p><p>“I can also be very <em>persuasive</em>,” Jaehyun continues to explain, and Johnny finds himself going to take a step closer before he can think about it. He shakes out of it moments later, around the time Mark starts growling in human form, and Johnny’s head starts to ache something fierce.</p><p>“Jaehyun-hyung, don’t do that,” mutters Mark, but Jaehyun just waves him off.</p><p>“I don’t understand why it doesn’t work on him,” the vampire says. The next look he gives Johnny is more calculating. “If Mark gets disobedient, I just smack him, which usually works,” he says, as if there’d been no interruption. “He’s only gotten the jump on me once.” At the end of that sentence, Jaehyun pulls up the right sleeve of his shirt, exposing one pale forearm. Johnny doesn’t have to look very hard to see the scar tissue, which is somehow paler than the rest of Jaehyun’s skin. It looks painful, the bite mark covering most of the lower half of Jaehyun’s arm and edging onto his wrist, and Johnny can easily imagine how Jaehyun must have gotten it—by shoving his right arm in between Mark’s snapping jaws as he held him back from his face, or something.</p><p>Mark scowls. “For the last time, I didn’t bite you on purpose,” he says. “And also, you are literally choosing to stay scarred. You could just stop limiting your blood intake and heal yourself—”</p><p>“How dare you,” says Jaehyun, dragging his sleeve back down. “This scar makes me look handsome. Don’t you want me to look handsome when Taeyongie comes back from South Korea?”</p><p>Mark rolls his eyes, shooting Johnny a look like he’s imparting a great secret. “Taeyong-hyung is Jaehyun-hyung’s vampire boyfriend and also sire. He’s in Seoul right now on business and has been gone for the past three months, which is why Jaehyun-hyung is particularly intolerable this evening.”</p><p>Johnny stares back at him with the sudden thought that he’s standing in the middle of Central Park talking to a mostly naked werewolf and a vampire, and that his life has literally turned into a BBC television show. He’s tempted to ask if either of them knows any ghosts.</p><p>“You don’t have to worry about me turning, by the way,” Mark says, glancing at the sky. “Jaehyun-hyung’s got me ordered not to change until twelve forty-five.”</p><p>“He used to do it whenever the sun would go down—as early as nine,” Jaehyun says, like this is <em>at all</em> a normal conversation. “That was fine, but really inconvenient. I like to be as well fed as possible on a full moon.” His lips quirk up. “Again. He only got the jump on me that one time.”</p><p>Johnny fights the urge to check his watch. “That makes sense,” he says, even though it <em>really shouldn’t</em>.</p><p>“Anyway, things are fine if you want to leave and say it was a false alarm,” Jaehyun continues for Mark. “I promise Mark and I are very safe.” He has the decency to look apologetic. “We’ve been doing this every month since October of last year and have only started getting reported because the weather warmed up and more people are out late at night.” He smiles, a dimple popping out in one cheek. Johnny doesn’t think vampires should be allowed to—exist—have dimples. “I’m usually able to get to people and keep them from calling you guys, but these last few months I’ve been too slow.”</p><p>“Distracted texting your boyfriend, more like,” mutters Mark, but he grins when Jaehyun swipes at him.</p><p>Johnny stares between them and finds that he does feel semi-reassured, if not likely to go back to the station and immediately beg for time off so that he can go stick his head under a shower and scream. Vampires and werewolves are <em>real</em>… and in Johnny’s city… and… friends? He gives in and checks his watch. Twelve-thirty. Fifteen minutes until Mark’s furry. “I guess I’ll just go, then.”</p><p>Jaehyun and Mark are still making eyes at each other, but Mark immediately faces forward looking abruptly serious. “Okay,” he says. He sounds… sad?</p><p>Johnny doesn’t know what to do with that. “Uh… good luck?” Johnny moves to clap Mark on the arm and then thinks better of it, leaving his hand awkwardly aloft in the air between them. Mark seems to shrink in on himself. “Try not to almost flash anyone else, yeah?” says Johnny.</p><p>“Will do,” says Mark, nodding furiously in a move that is so doglike that Johnny could just laugh, before vaulting back over the ledge and disappearing into the trees. Jaehyun just nods and gives a perfectly delivered salute, before following suit without a sound.</p><p>Johnny stares after them for several long seconds, before turning to head back to the precinct. “False alarm,” he radios to Williams. “Just a guy jogging—it is August.”</p><p>“Too bad,” Williams replies. Then adds, “Ah—John went to go check out a streaker.”</p><p>“Oh, a streaker.” Rogers comes on the line with a knowingness to her voice that Johnny very suddenly understands, and he stops in his tracks. “Say, John. Any chance you feel like popping over a few blocks to get us all a snack?”</p><p>“That depends,” Johnny replies. “Any chance you want to invite me on your next vacation?”</p><p>Rogers is quiet for a moment, and Johnny knows she understands. “He’ll be back in a bit,” she relays, letting Johnny hear her do it, and that’s… well that’s that. They’re just not going to talk about it, then. Johnny’s okay with that. But if he checks the news the next morning for any sort or reported animal attacks or dead bodies showing up without any blood in them? That’s between him and his internet provider.</p>
<hr/><p>By the time his lunch break rolls around the next day, and Johnny is once again waiting in line to order a sandwich and maybe a soft drink, he’s pretty much resigned himself to that being the end of his supernatural adventures. If—and that’s a big if; Johnny’s going to do his best to prevent it from happening but he supposes he ought to leave room for failure—he runs into Mark or Jaehyun, neither Mark nor Jaehyun will acknowledge the werewolf thing, and neither will Johnny. At most they might acknowledge they know each other, exchange greetings and well wishes, and generally act like people who went to high school together. Or even elementary. But Johnny doesn’t expect he’ll run into Mark or Jaehyun, really. New York is a big city, and he’s like one of eight-point-five million.</p><p>So of course Jaehyun shows up outside the sandwich shop and waves.</p><p>Johnny nearly loses his phone to the shop floor.</p><p>“Are you alright?” the girl in line beside him says, and Johnny signals her off with a smile, shoving his phone into his pants pocket and staring even harder at Jaehyun.</p><p>The vampire just keeps on waving, expression utterly calm, and as Johnny watches, he parts his lips enough to reveal—</p><p>Johnny abandons his spot in line in his haste to get out of the shop, reaching Jaehyun and grabbing him by the wrist to tug him out of the main sidewalk. “What are you <em>doing</em>? Don’t flash those,” Johnny says, glancing around to make sure nobody else has seen.</p><p>Jaehyun’s wrist feels cool but not quite smooth, and Johnny notes it’s the one Mark mauled with a minor pause. Up close, the bite looks even worse—and Johnny—God—Mark <em>did</em> that… to a <em>vampire</em>.</p><p>But Johnny is holding that vampire by the arm, and it’s half-past twelve. He pauses. “How are you outside?” he says. “You—shouldn’t you”—Johnny doesn’t know how to mime burning up in direct sunlight without looking like a complete idiot, so he settles for tilting his head towards the celestial body in question a few times instead—“you know,” he finishes. “Right?”</p><p>Jaehyun just shakes his head at him and also takes back his hand. “Yes,” he says slowly. “If I’m following whatever that”—he repeats Johnny’s headbanging move, but on him it somehow looks cool—“was supposed to be. But I’ve got this ring”—he lifts his left hand so Johnny can see the jewelry he’s wearing on his wedding finger—“and it keeps me from”—more headbanging, God Johnny wants to tug off the ring just to spite him—“as it were.”</p><p>“You’re an asshole, aren’t you,” Johnny concludes after a moment. He notices Jaehyun doesn’t mention the necklace he’s also wearing but given the matching red stones… Johnny figures he’ll allow Jaehyun his secrets. If he was Jaehyun, he supposes he’d want to have more than a few fail-safes. He wouldn’t want to end up embers for something so stupid as his ring size changing.</p><p>“I have no idea what you mean,” says Jaehyun loftily, and Johnny snorts. His first thought is to punch him, but then he’s faced again with the reality of him, and… “Is Mark with you?” he says. Immediately he wishes he could take the words back—they sound small, and shy, but Jaehyun doesn’t seem to mind.</p><p>“Why, do you miss him?” he says.</p><p>Johnny glares at him. “No,” he says after a small pause. It only feels a little bit like lying. “I just—I didn’t expect to see either of you so soon.” Johnny licks his lower lip. “Or for you to be so honest with me, actually.”</p><p>Jaehyun has the decency to look a little apologetic. “Sorry, Hyung,” he says. They’ve both been speaking Korean this whole time, so that must be the language Jaehyun prefers, despite being fluent in English and living in New York City. (Or maybe why he’s living in New York City, given the excess of intermingling cultures.) “That was… kind of my idea.”</p><p>Johnny blinks. “What was?”</p><p>“Mark running into you and acting like nothing happened,” answers Jaehyun. “You didn’t cash my check.” Come to think of it, Johnny still hasn’t, fuck. “And you kept Googling ‘werewolves.’” Jaehyun pauses. “And talking about them to your friends.”</p><p>Johnny points an accusatory finger at him. “You were <em>spying on me</em>!”</p><p>“I was looking out for Mark,” Jaehyun corrects, a little harsher than Johnny had been expecting, and Johnny deflates. “Anyway, I could tell you were two seconds from going to the police about it, so I acted.” His dimples pop out. “Sorry.”</p><p>Vampires should not be allowed to have dimples. “You’re sorry,” says Johnny. “I thought I was losing my mind.”</p><p>Jaehyun just shrugs. “I said I was sorry,” he says, then winces like someone’s hit him. Johnny looks between him and where he’s suddenly glaring and sees nothing. “I apologize for gaslighting you, Johnny-hyung,” says Jaehyun, as if he’s reciting dialogue. “Haven’t you got other places to be? Like, say, <em>Seoul</em>, keeping Taeyongie out of trouble—”</p><p>“What are you talking about?” says Johnny, baffled.</p><p>“Nothing.” Jaehyun smiles at him with dimples and shiny eyes. “You’re very tall, Johnny-hyung, did you know?” He puts a hand on Johnny’s left bicep as he does so, and regards Johnny like Johnny imagines one might eye a very large piece of meat. Given the fangs—and Jaehyun’s diet—he guesses that comparison isn’t all that far off.</p><p>“Thank you?” Johnny says, at the same time Mark Lee comes seemingly out of nowhere, elbowing his way between the two of them without touching any part of Johnny.</p><p>Jaehyun goes where he’s directed with only minimal wincing, and when Johnny looks at him, he actually winks. “Interesting,” he says.</p><p>“What the fuck are you doing?” growls Mark, voice low and threatening, but Jaehyun just raises both hands. The vampire is holding a piece of paper and a pen before Johnny can think too hard about it, and the paper is held out for Johnny to take equally quickly.</p><p>“Johnny-hyung—here’s my number.” Jaehyun snorts, an action that seems out of place for an immortal creature. “Mark and mine’s number,” he amends—Johnny notes he has put down two cell numbers with New York area codes. “Feel free to text sometime. We could hang out.”</p><p>“You could <em>not</em>,” snarls Mark, and Johnny decides a tactical retreat is the best option.</p><p>He makes a show of taking the paper, putting it in his breast pocket with great care, and starts very carefully backing away. “It was nice seeing both of you this afternoon,” he says, bowing, and then he fucking… flees.</p><p>Back inside the shop, he faces straight ahead and doesn’t look to see if Jaehyun and Mark have left, patiently waiting for his turn to order, and then heads for the first empty table he finds to eat lunch.</p><p>And then, with ice forming in his stomach, he remembers texting his mother on July 6. And talking to her about werewolves. And the funny way her voice sounded, at the start of the conversation. And he thinks… well… fuck it. At minimum she’ll probably have good advice. At maximum she’ll come visit him in New York, which isn’t exactly a hardship; so Johnny’s a mama’s boy, so sue him.</p><p><kbd>Mom, can we talk?</kbd> Johnny texts below that morning’s, <kbd>Hi, I love you.</kbd> He waits for the message to mark as <kbd>read</kbd> and follows up with, <kbd>It’s important.</kbd></p><p><kbd>Sweetie, hi, can this wait?</kbd> replies his mom. <kbd>I’m in the middle of a meeting.</kbd></p><p><kbd>I just met a vampire and a werewolf</kbd>, writes Johnny. <kbd>And no, I’m not kidding. Yes, I know yesterday was the full moon</kbd>, he adds. <kbd>I can wait if now’s a bad time. I’m off at five like a normal person tonight?</kbd></p><p>His mom reads his messages. The typing bubble appears at the side of the screen, then disappears. Johnny’s phone lights up with a photo of the two of them together, pressed cheek to cheek taking a selfie.</p><p>He answers the phone. “Mom?”</p><p>“Which vampire?” barks his mom in furious Korean. “Was it Taeyong? I swear if it was Taeyongie I’m getting on the next flight to LaGuardia and going to <em>stake him</em>. He swore he wouldn’t so much as <em>look </em>at you. I <em>told </em>Yunho he couldn’t control his children, but did he <em>listen</em>—”</p><p>Johnny’s mouth falls open in honest shock. “Mom,” he manages. “What are you talking about? ‘Taeyong.’ ‘Children.’ ‘<em>Which vampire</em>’?”</p><p>His mother just keeps going. “I’m booking the ticket now,” she says. “Which day works best for you? Friday? Saturday—”</p><p>“Mom!” Johnny says loudly. “You don’t have to come to New York!”</p><p>His mother doesn’t respond, and Johnny narrows his eyes.</p><p>“Take the ticket out of your cart,” he tells her.</p><p>There’s another pause, and then his mother comes back on the line sounding considerably more displeased. “Give me one good reason why,” she says.</p><p>“It’s not Taeyong,” Johnny says, placing the name as Jaehyun’s “vampire boyfriend” and “sire?” He thinks that’s what Mark said. “His name is Jaehyun? Anyway, it’s not a big deal—Mark—the uh… <em>dog</em> is very nice. Jaehyun’s got him under control.” He pauses to let the absurdity of the conversation wash over him and then returns to the more pressing point. “What the heck do you mean ‘which one’?”</p><p>“Jaehyunnie,” says his mom instead. “Is he well? I hope he’s well. I’ve only met him once, but I like Jaehyunnie a lot. And I heard Taeyongie was a terror before they met each other in the twenties.”</p><p>Johnny has lost the plot and then some. “What are you even <em>saying</em>?” he says. “Do you hear yourself? You’re supposed to be shocked!” He throws a hand in the air to make his point even though she can’t see him. “Or telling me ‘there’s no such thing as vampires, Youngho-yah,’ and then sending me an excess of home cooked meals!”</p><p>His mother… doesn’t tell him there’s no such thing as vampires or offer to send him an excess of home cooked meals.</p><p>“Mom!” Johnny says.</p><p>“Listen, Youngho,” says his mom. “I was waiting until you were a little older to tell you this—”</p><p>“I’m twenty-eight!” Johnny says. “I have a job! I live in a completely different city with my own—admittedly shitty—apartment—”</p><p>“I’m very distantly related to the vampire Shim Changmin,” says his mom, interrupting Johnny’s tirade with her own bombshell. “Which means by definition, so are you. Anyway—”</p><p>“<em>Anyway</em>!” Johnny’s phone dings to let him know his lunch break is almost over and he needs to get his ass back to the station, and he clicks into his text messages with <kbd>Rogers comma Officer</kbd> and texts the woman, <kbd>I’m going to be a little late after lunch and I need you to cover for me. You owe me. It’s cruise related.</kbd></p><p>“Youngho…” Johnny’s mom sounds like she’s disappointed that he’s making a scene.</p><p>“What do you mean you’re <em>related to a vampire</em>?” says Johnny.</p><p>His mom sighs. “Exactly that,” she says. “They used to be humans with families—and those families continued existing long after they were undead.” She seems to consider something. “I’m not his great-great-great granddaughter, or something,” she adds quickly. “They’re sterile, in case you were wondering. No vampire is going around having babies.”</p><p>Johnny… hadn’t really been wondering, but he supposes that’s good to know. “Great,” he says. “Nice to know I’m not genetically predisposed to grow fangs.”</p><p>“I’m glad to see your Korean is still so good,” his mom says happily. “Even though you don’t know how to say ‘genetically predisposed.’” She says the words in English like Johnny had and Johnny fights the urge to scream at her.</p><p>“Mom!” he says instead. “Explain!”</p><p><kbd>Is this going to be our new code word?</kbd> Rogers replies. <kbd>I told Williams you’re trapped in a public restroom being violently, violently ill, by the way. You’re welcome. Do try to act accordingly when you get back.</kbd></p><p><kbd>Thanks</kbd>, Johnny replies, not sure he really means it. His mother still hasn’t said more. “Mom?”</p><p>“I really don’t know what else to tell you,” she says. “I—it’s not like there’s much to tell.”</p><p>“No, only just that werewolves and vampires <em>exist</em>,” hisses Johnny. “I feel like that should have been something you told me!”</p><p>Johnny’s mom scoffs. “No, I didn’t want you to grow up looking over your shoulder—like I did. Your grandmother—bless her soul—was many things, but raising me in the life has to be one of her great failures.”</p><p>“‘In the life,’” repeats Johnny. “In the <em>werewolf and vampire</em> life.”</p><p>His mother sighs. “Youngho…” she says.</p><p>“No, it’s fine,” Johnny says. “You were just trying to do what’s best for me. Have you got any other important secrets lying around, though? It feels like now would be the time to tell.” He pulls a face. “Dad’s normal, right? He’s not like… a zombie.”</p><p>Johnny’s mother sounds disappointed. “There are no such things as zombies, Johnny-yah,” she says.</p><p>Johnny nearly laughs. “Oh, my mistake,” he says. “There’s just werewolves and vampires.”</p><p>His mother is silent for a beat. “Yes,” she says.</p><p>Johnny decides the safest option is not to address that. He chews on the inside of his cheek. “I forgive you, by the way,” he says. “I always will—I—I know you always did your best with me.”</p><p>“Johnny,” Johnny’s mom says, sounding almost concerned. “Are you—”</p><p>“I’m fine. I’m not dying.” In fact Johnny feels relaxed enough about things that he takes a bite out of his sandwich. “And as I said—Mark and Jaehyun were very nice.”</p><p>“Mark,” says his mom. “The werewolf is named Mark?”</p><p>Johnny pauses. “Yeah… Mark Lee… Why—are you going to look him up—is there a registry—”</p><p>“Not officially. No one’s keeping a written list of everyone in all the various packs—that would be impossible.” His mom ruins her statement by audibly clicking around on her computer in the background. “All travel in and out of South Korea has to be cleared with the pack leaders, though, and given that you live in New York, someone should have let me know.”</p><p>Johnny blinks, not even sure where to start. “Wait—Mark’s not—Mark’s—<em>new</em>,” he says finally. “He didn’t—he didn’t travel here from Seoul, or anything. He lives here. He’s got a New York driver’s license and everything.” His mother is very suddenly silent. Johnny tries desperately to fill the space with words. “He was bit—I think he said his first moon was October of last year?” He wracks his brain for what little the internet had told him. “That would have been the, uh, Hunters Moon?”</p><p>Johnny’s mom doesn’t comment on his accuracy. “October of last year? You’re certain? October 2022?”</p><p>Johnny pauses. “That’s what he said,” he says. It is. Jaehyun even said that he and Mark had only started getting reported because the weather warmed up.</p><p>His mother’s next sentence comes out pained. “That’s not good,” she says. “And you’re sure he knows Jaehyun—”</p><p>“Mom, they… spend the moon together—what’s going on—”</p><p>“If he’s friendly with Jaehyunnie someone should have told me, especially since you’re living in the city.”</p><p>Johnny swallows the urge to shout at her about how she’s got a whole system to keep track of all the fucking <em>werewolves</em> and <em>vampires</em> that pass through <em>Johnny’s city</em>.</p><p>“I’m going to have to call you back,” says his mother. “I need to… talk to Changmin-oppa.” She sounds as happy as Johnny is to know his mother calls this vampire “oppa.” “And not just through my cousins—over the phone.”</p><p>“Mom.” Johnny doesn’t have the energy to say more.</p><p>“Sorry, baby,” says his mom. “We can talk later? Maybe when you’re not in public?”</p><p>Johnny casts guiltily around the shop but finds no one looking any the wiser, although there is one Korean girl sitting at the table next to him in front of some textbooks with her straw hanging from her mouth. Johnny smiles at her and lowers his voice. “You do that—look—have I gotten Mark in trouble by telling you—”</p><p>“Tomorrow is best for me,” says his mom. “Because of the time difference—Johnny I love you, never let me convince you otherwise.”</p><p>Johnny’s swallows all other words. “I love you too, Mom,” he says, and hangs up the phone. On his way to the trash can, he smiles at the Korean girl again, mouthing, <em>My mom’s an actor—it was for a script</em>, with exaggerated lip movements, before heading for the front doors and booking it for the nearest subway station.</p><p>It’s not until he’s appeased Williams with his best impression of a man suffering from food poisoning that he thinks to pull the piece of paper with Jaehyun and Mark’s phone numbers out of his breast pocket, entering them into his contacts app with only minor pause.</p><p><kbd>Hi, this is Johnny. Suh Youngho</kbd>, he texts Jaehyun, since he seems the safer option. (And also, the thought of texting Mark kind of makes Johnny’s palms start sweating? He’s not entirely sure why.) <kbd>So. Uh. It turns out my mom? Is related to some vampire named Shim Changmin? And I kind of told her about Mark and now she has to tell that guy? Shim Changmin? Sorry? You weren’t not telling him about Mark for a reason, yeah?</kbd></p><p>Jaehyun’s the kind of asshole who has read receipts on, and Johnny knows for a fact he could turn them off.</p><p><kbd>Johnny-hyung</kbd>, he replies, and then drops a pin with his location—a brownstone on Fifth Avenue.</p><p>Johnny swallows bile. Oh God. Apparently they were keeping Mark a secret from Shim Changmin for a reason.</p><p>Fuck. <kbd>I’m not off work until five</kbd>, he types shakily, hitting send with his heart in his throat. <kbd>Is that fine?</kbd></p><p>Jaehyun just likes the message, the tiny bubble with the thumbs up making Johnny’s temple start to sweat now too.</p><p>“John.” Rogers walks by his desk with a folder. “We’ve got a call—come on.”</p><p>Johnny juggles his phone like a circus performer, and then stands, chastened. “Yes—of course—I’m on it.”</p><p>Rogers just narrows her eyes at him and walks away.</p>
<hr/><p>Johnny loiters at the bottom of the stairs to Jaehyun and Mark’s brownstone for minutes, having come directly from work. He’s being ridiculous. He should just get it over with. But something about walking up those steps to knock on the door and deal with the vampire and the werewolf is too much for Johnny… and really, he can’t imagine why! But the guilt of his mother texting that she was still good to speak tomorrow and, also, she had managed to contact Shim Changmin and he hadn’t known about Mark Lee the werewolf either is only going to keep eating at Johnny, so he walks up the stairs and knocks.</p><p>Jaehyun answers the door. He looks perfectly normal for all of two seconds, until he smiles showing all of his teeth like he’s read Johnny’s mind and laughs when Johnny pulls a face.</p><p>“Stop… doing that,” Johnny says, once he’s fought off the fight-or-flight response and stepped inside the apartment. He spots a place to put his shoes and bends to do so without pause.</p><p>“Mark-yah!” Jaehyun calls in Korean. “Suh-hyungsa is here to see you!”</p><p>“I’m not actually a detective,” Johnny says once he’s finished with his shoes, but he still looks around a little eagerly for Mark. There’s a mirror right in the entryway, and Johnny darts a quick glance in it just to make sure he doesn’t look like an idiot and not for any other reason; Jaehyun totally notices, but he takes the moment to fix his own hair in a manner that seems almost involuntary, so neither of them comment.</p><p>Immediately to the right of the mirror is what looks like a K-pop album—one that Johnny recognizes from when he was listening to that group from the crossword, Millennium—and Johnny stares at it for an embarrassingly long time, taking in the moderately attractive young adult on the front with bright red hair and what looks like a personalized note and signature penned onto his right cheek. <em>Mark-hyung, you asshole, I love you most</em>, the note reads. Johnny tries not to think about how Millennium are with <em>SM</em>, and how <em>Johnny</em> was almost with SM and how Mark? Knows Millennium?</p><p>Then he looks at Jaehyun hoping for some sort of explanation, and finds the vampire staring back with a smirk on his lips. “Mark-yah!” says Jaehyun.</p><p>A few seconds pass, but Mark doesn’t appear, and Johnny resigns himself to following Jaehyun through the house in search of him, trying not to over-catalogue. The place is very, very nice, but Johnny supposes that is to be expected, given Jaehyun probably has tons of funds from being a vampire. Although perhaps the place is Mark’s… but something about the architecture makes Johnny think that’s not the case.</p><p>Jaehyun comes to a halt in the middle of the living room, stopping directly in front of an oversized metal suitcase. Johnny peers over the lip and sees it’s neatly packed to the halfway mark, clothes rolled efficiently to take up as little space as possible. He blinks.</p><p>“Are you going somewhere?” Johnny looks around at the rest of the impressive living room because he’s trained to and then stops, eyes catching on a collection of paper shopping bags emblazoned with— “Wait, are those from Louboutin and Vera Wang?”</p><p>“Yeah, I felt bad. Mark-yah!” Jaehyun shouts for Mark again, distracting Johnny from his shopping choices instantly. “And yes—we’re going to Seoul this evening.” Jaehyun’s lips pull up at the corners but then he winces—possibly at something Mark’s said from the second floor? “We—uh—we’ve been called home.” He winces again. This time Johnny hears footsteps on the stairs. “Um… don’t let him get to you—it’s really not that big of a deal.”</p><p>“Officer Suh, hi,” greets Mark in English, coming into the living room in shorts and a t-shirt. He takes one look at the suitcase and pulls a face, tongue poking out with distaste. “Thanks so very much for getting me arrested on my birthday.” He passes Johnny and Jaehyun and the suitcase to enter what must be the kitchen, because Johnny can hear the telltale clang of silverware against counter tops, and the open and close of what has to be a fridge.</p><p>“It’s your birthday?” says Johnny—in Korean to match Mark’s last sentence. “Wait, what do you mean <em>arrested</em>—”</p><p>“It’s just a tribunal,” says Jaehyun, by all means sounding like he thinks this is going to reassure Johnny. “Technically speaking Jungwoo was probably supposed to have registered Mark or something—or at least told someone ranked higher in the pack. I don’t know. That’s above my paygrade.”</p><p>Mark pokes his head out of the kitchen with another sour look. “You can stop talking like you’re an eighteenth-century Englishman, asshat,” he says. “We’re watching that new British show? About the vampire count? Jaehyun-hyung’s got in his head that he’s not a real vampire if he doesn’t sound ‘upper crust.’”</p><p>Jaehyun scowls at Mark, but his next sentence does come out significantly less… structured. “Whatever. Jungwoo fucked up by not telling anyone he accidentally bit Mark and then I fucked up by not telling anyone other than Taeyongie that Jungwoo accidentally bit Mark and now we all have to go home to stand trial in front of Yunho-hyung and Changmin-hyung and probably fucking Lee Sooyoung, Park Eunyoung, and Yang Hyunsuk to decide if Mark is ‘in hand,’ whatever the fuck that means.”</p><p>Mark emerges from the kitchen carrying a cake box, two plates, and some forks. “That was what the official correspondence said, anyway,” he says. “Taeyong-hyung texted Jaehyun-hyung their ‘letter,’ but I got the sense that the powers that be were very upset they couldn’t send a telegram.”</p><p>Jaehyun gets an almost wistful expression on his face and Mark chucks a fork at him, not even aiming somewhere safe. Jaehyun catches it without so much as a flinch, but Johnny steps back anyway, heart racing.</p><p>Mark shoots him a mildly concerned look in response, even as he busies himself setting the cake down on the living room table. It looks like one of those store-bought ones you can get custom ordered with your face printed on it, but for some reason Mark’s cake has a giant blowup of a watermelon on it. When he catches Johnny staring, Mark just sighs. “Jaehyun-hyung bought it,” he says. “Do you want a piece?” It’s clearly a rhetorical question because he leaves the cake and plates to head back into the kitchen, emerging with a large knife, which he uses to cut two pieces from the left side of the watermelon. “We were going to do candles, but then we got ‘the telegram.’” He sighs some more and goes to stick a finger in the icing on one of the slices.</p><p>Johnny snaps out of it. “You have to have candles!” he says. “You have to make a wish—you—you can’t <em>not</em>!” He can’t explain whose unofficial rule it is, but now that he’s said it and Mark is open mouthed and staring at him, he has no choice but to stand by it. “You have to,” he says. “By decree of…” He searches for something to say. “The 22nd precinct.”</p><p>“The 22nd precinct,” repeats Mark.</p><p>“That’s where Johnny-hyung works,” supplies Jaehyun.</p><p>“Stop <em>stalking me</em>!” snaps Johnny, even though he understands that it’s in Jaehyun’s best interest to be intimately familiar with the 22nd precinct given his and Mark’s full moon proclivities.</p><p>“I’ll get the candles,” Mark says finally.</p><p>After Mark’s blown the candles out and made a wish—and both Mark and Johnny have had more than a few bites of their cake—Johnny clears his throat and addresses the elephant in the room. “Hey… sorry I told my mom about you,” he tells Mark.</p><p>Mark looks back at him over his piece of cake, for two seconds looking like a dog caught eating something he wasn’t supposed to. He’s got a spot of icing on the tip of his nose, which doesn’t help. “Oh,” he says finally, swallowing. “I—it’s fine.”</p><p>Johnny manages a smile. “No, really,” he says. “I—I’m sorry I’m apparently… related to a vampire?”</p><p>Jaehyun lifts his head as if called, acknowledging them both from where he’d been twirling his own useless utensil with one hand and texting with the other, looking almost guilty to be caught out doing so. “What? Oh—oh yeah.” His phone disappears into a pocket and he lowers the fork so it’s not quite so <em>The</em> <em>Little Mermaid</em>—his hair’s too short for him to use it as a brush, and he’s not a seagull. “Yeah… yeah… yeah.”</p><p>Johnny raises an eyebrow and swallows a bite of cake. “Yeah?”</p><p>“Changmin-hyung and Yunho-hyung have the same vampire sire.” Jaehyun seems perfectly at ease with this information. “Kwon Boa—you probably wouldn’t know her, but your mom will.”</p><p>Johnny makes a note to ask.</p><p>“Anyway, Yunho-hyung is Taeyongie’s sire and Taeyongie is my sire… you get the picture.”</p><p>Johnny mulls that over with another bite of the surprisingly good watermelon-covered cake. “Does that make us related?” he says, mostly joking, but Jaehyun’s eyes light up.</p><p>“Maybe.” He almost sounds eager. “That probably explains why you’re less susceptible to my compulsion.”</p><p>Johnny pulls a face. “Yeah… the fact that you can literally tell me what to do and have used that on me is not cool,” he says. His mom had lots to say when Johnny mentioned over texts that he kept getting headaches in conjunction with encountering Jaehyun, and Johnny hadn’t liked any of it, although the fact that their entire family was resilient to it was a plus.</p><p>“Mmm,” says Jaehyun, back to twirling the fork. “Speaking of—since we’re related—can I have my ten thousand dollars back?”</p><p>Johnny stares.</p><p>Jaehyun just stares back. “You haven’t cashed it,” he says.</p><p>Johnny <em>hasn’t</em> but it’s the principle of the thing. “No you cannot have your ten thousand dollars back!” he hisses.</p><p>Jaehyun sighs. “Well then at least <em>cash</em> the thing. It’s worth nothing as a piece of paper with my signature on it—Andromeda was not nearly this recalcitrant. Anyway.” Jaehyun reverses the direction he’s twirling the fork, and Johnny feels quite like the air no doubt displaced around the thing. “You being sort of related to me. It still doesn’t explain Mark’s thing about you.”</p><p>Mark makes a choking noise around his final bit of cake, and swallows valiantly despite the watering of his eyes. “Fuck you,” he says, setting down his empty plate and reaching for Johnny’s. “Are you done? Let me get that.” He’s into the kitchen with both plates and forks before Johnny can comment.</p><p>Jaehyun only smiles when Johnny glances at him hoping for clarification. “Can I have some of your hair?” he says.</p><p>“Fuck <em>off</em>!” says Mark, leaving the kitchen and yanking the fork out of Jaehyun’s hand on his way past. “How long are we going to be in Seoul?”</p><p>“Three days, maybe four,” says Jaehyun. “The tribunal’s set for Saturday, but you know how Taeyongie gets.”</p><p>Mark emerges back out of the kitchen without the fork and smiles at Johnny as he does. “Yeah—okay.” He heads out of the living room for the stairs, clearly off to get more clothes.</p><p>Johnny feels like he should leave. “Uh—I should go—I’ll go—”</p><p>“Stay,” says Jaehyun, crossing around the room to reach the suitcase, which he lugs closer to the stairs. “Mark will walk you to the subway when he’s done.”</p><p>“I will <em>not</em>!” calls Mark.</p><p>Jaehyun grins with both dimples. “That’s rude of you,” he says.</p><p>Mark’s voice comes back with considerably more panic. “I can walk you if you’d like, Johnny-hyung!”</p><p>Johnny shakes his head. “No—it’s fine, I’ll—” <em>Walk</em>, he intends to finish, when he sees the mirror above the mantle place, and notices abruptly that Jaehyun isn’t showing up in it. “Oh my God.”</p><p>Jaehyun looks up from his phone, immediately glancing around. “What—what’s wrong—oh.”</p><p>“You,” Johnny points at the empty space that should be Jaehyun’s reflection unable to find more words. “I.”</p><p>Jaehyun just stares back at him, holding his phone. “Jaehyun,” he says, pointing at his own chest. “Johnny.”</p><p>“What?” Johnny settles on. Jaehyun showed up in the mirror in the entryway. Johnny saw him fluff his hair.</p><p>Mark appears back down the stairs carrying a handful of clothes, clearly headed for the suitcase in the living room. He sighs when he sees where Johnny is looking. “That’s the silver mirror,” he explains, inclining his head at the thing in question. “Modern day mirrors aren’t made from silver,” he adds. “So Jaehyun-hyung shows up in them. But older ones are, and he doesn’t show up in those.”</p><p>“Thank God for nickel,” says Jaehyun happily. “Can you imagine if I had no way of knowing what was going on with my hair?”</p><p>Johnny has to admit that would be tough—not being able to check your own appearance. He’s still a little creeped out, though. Jaehyun has fangs and Johnny saw Mark turn into a wolf, but the fangs still feel like they could be elaborate body modifications and the wolf transformation a terribly realistic dream; Jaehyun not showing up in the mirror is the most concrete bit of evidence he’s gotten so far, and it unsettles him.</p><p>“We both can’t touch it, by the way,” says Mark, dragging Johnny’s eyes back to him. “Silver is poisonous to werewolves <em>and</em> vampires.”</p><p>Johnny had learned that online, so he just nods. The next logical question would probably be “Why do you own a silver mirror if it’s poisonous to the both of you?” but he’s not entirely sure he trusts himself to do more than gesture.</p><p>“My friend Donghyuck had to bring the thing into the house and everything. He’s human.”</p><p>Johnny latches onto that bit of information semi-desperately. “You have a human friend?” he says.</p><p>Mark frowns at him. “I didn’t get rid of all of my friends in October, if that’s what you’re asking. All of them have been very understanding of my situation.”</p><p>“Right,” says Johnny. “Of course. My bad. Why wouldn’t they understand?”</p><p>Mark seems to take pity on him. “Donghyuckie lives in South Korea anyway. We mostly talk over Skype.”</p><p>“Right,” Johnny says. He’s pretty sure Donghyuck is the real name of one of the kids in Millennium—the one on the album in the foyer—so that makes sense. He glances back at the mirror. “So… why silver?”</p><p>“Well, one theory is we don’t have a soul,” says Jaehyun, startling Johnny, who’d forgotten he was standing in the room because he doesn’t have a reflection. “Which is stupid.”</p><p>Johnny casts a glance at Mark, who immediately speaks. “By that logic, everything in this room has a soul.” He gestures with one hand and almost drops a pair of neatly bundled socks. “And also, that’s just not how mirrors work—we know that now.”</p><p>“Right,” Johnny says for the third time. “Only… silver?”</p><p>“It’s divine.” Jaehyun steps up to the glass and touches the surface of the mirror before anyone can stop him, and Johnny flinches back when the skin of his fingers… sizzles. “We’re not,” says Jaehyun.</p><p>“It’s metal,” Johnny manages. “That doesn’t make any sense—”</p><p>“I turn into a wolf every full moon,” Mark says, dumping his clothes into the suitcase. “I think we’re beyond things making scientific sense, Johnny-hyung.”</p><p>Johnny has to give him that. “Here,” he says, looking down at the disarray of Mark’s clothing, and crossing the room to put his hands on Mark’s wrists. “Let me help—you hand, I’ll fold. It’s the least I can do, given this is kind of all my fault.”</p><p>Mark is staring at him with his mouth open and his eyes fixed on where they’re touching, but after a brief pause, nods. “Sure. Thanks.”</p><p>Mark has a terrible amount of what he calls his “moon boxers,” all of them cheap fabric made to be destroyed, and all of them covered in moons and wolves. He’s pretty sure no one can make him change outside of a full moon, but he wants to be covered just in case. “Besides,” he explains, tucking in a t-shirt that seems more thread than anything else and apparently three seasons ago’s jeans. “I’d hate to make ‘the council’ think they’re important, or something.”</p><p>“Oh, right,” agrees Johnny, mentally making a note to harass his mother about the existence of a supernatural council of vampires and/or werewolves, even though he’s ninety percent certain Mark’s just using hyperbole.</p>
<hr/><p>Mark and Jaehyun get back sometime on Sunday, landing at LaGuardia in the late afternoon. Johnny gets a text that they’re on their layover from Jaehyun, who’s been much more receptive to Johnny’s obsessive-compulsive monitoring than Mark has. Johnny’s mom told him she didn’t think anyone was going to execute Mark, but she sure as hell put the thought in his mind by assuring him that wasn’t going to be the case, and Johnny waited by the phone all weekend, especially when he wasn’t distracted by work.</p><p>Stephanie kept him appraised of her own business venture, which took her home to Chicago, but without his main point of contact in New York, Johnny had free reign to panic.</p><p>And he did.</p><p>Which is why he shows up outside Jaehyun and Mark’s brownstone around the time Google told him a flight from Atlanta to New York would land, plus cab-time to Fifth Avenue. Google is off by a few minutes, but Johnny is content to wait, and therefore he’s there and waiting when Mark and Jaehyun step out of the cab, accompanied by another man.</p><p>Jaehyun doesn’t seem surprised—or upset—to see him, but Mark takes one look at Johnny and scowls, eyes darkening, before stomping up the stairs past him without even a backwards glance. He unlocks the door and goes inside, careful to slam it behind him.</p><p>Johnny jumps. “Oh—I—”</p><p>Jaehyun follows Mark after only a mild pause, hefting two suitcases. “Mark-yah—you forgot the suitcase!” he calls in Korean as he goes, and Johnny flinches when he hears Mark holler “fuck you!” in English back. Jaehyun tugs the door shut after him, this time leaving it a sliver open, and then it’s just Johnny and the new addition.</p><p>He’s tall enough, but shorter than Johnny and probably Jaehyun, with dark hair and very pale skin. His complexion is otherwise flawless despite the lack of melanin; the longer Johnny looks, the more he thinks he’s got to be some sort of Korean idol. Then the man smiles, revealing the slip of fangs, and Johnny notices the ring on his finger. It’s a near match to Jaehyun’s but the jewel is purple. An amethyst, Johnny realizes, having stared at his fair share of photos of his birthstone. He tries to remember what Stephanie’s stone was, since he’s pretty sure it was red. “A ruby,” Johnny says, and the man—who must be Taeyong—smiles.</p><p>“Suh Youngho, Myoryon’s son,” he says.</p><p>Johnny pulls a face. “Please don’t remind me you know my mom,” he says.</p><p>Taeyong just keeps smiling. “I like your mom.” He pauses. “I actually met you once.”</p><p>Johnny hates his life.</p><p>“You were maybe three… sorry, two—international age.” The vampire grins at Johnny again, but this smile shows no teeth and seems much less unsettling. “Uh—” Taeyong pauses. “You shouldn’t worry too much about Mark.” He steps off the sidewalk and up a few of the stairs, graceful and silent. “He’s just mad because legally speaking, he belongs to Jaehyunnie and I, now.”</p><p>Johnny opens and closes his mouth.</p><p>“I mean it makes sense,” says Taeyong. “Jungwoo has a whole life in Seoul—it would have been ridiculous to expect him to upend everything to come and look after Mark, and all. We were the next best thing.” Taeyong’s eyes flick to the side for a brief second, pausing. “Yes… I know you hate me because I ruined your vacation with Jungwoo.”</p><p>Johnny decides not to even address that, having been educated about Taeyong’s friend, Kim Doyoung, sometime when Mark was trapped in an airport in Los Angeles. Taeyong’s friend Kim Doyoung is now a ghost, who’d died several years before Taeyong did and ended up perpetually immortal when he refused to pass on before “Taeyong-hyung died happy,” as the story goes. Apparently, ghosts are visible to most other supernatural creatures, like Jaehyun and Mark. It takes work to show themselves to normal humans, and Johnny still is only that: human. He might be distantly related to a vampire and therefore somewhat resistant to compulsion from that vampire’s vampire family, but he’s still just Johnny Suh, twenty-eight, a rookie, and no more able to see ghosts than any other person.</p><p>“Hello, Doyoung,” he says anyway, because it seems like the respectable thing to do. “Uh… nice to meet you.” He bows.</p><p>“Doyoungie says back at you,” says Taeyong, and then laughs. “In much nicer words. Wave.” His hair swings to the side and one of the strings on his hoodie lifts up in the air.</p><p>Johnny dips his head in that general direction. His life is a BBC sitcom.</p><p>Taeyong rolls his eyes, but seems pleased.</p><p>Johnny collects himself. “I’m glad Mark’s not mad at me,” he says. “So—” He moves like he’s going to go.</p><p>“He’s not really even mad at Jaehyunnie,” says Taeyong, not letting him. “In fact he was fine with it until Jaehyunnie went and bought him a dog collar.” Taeyong grins and he has crinkles beside his eyes. “It says ‘I heart New York’ on it, but the heart is an apple.”</p><p>Johnny is already picturing it on human-Mark, not wolf-Mark, and he rapidly shakes off the thought. “Cool,” he says, not meaning it. “I mean not cool—I mean. I’m glad you’re all okay, and it was very nice to meet you. Officially,” he says, smiling.</p><p>This time, Taeyong lets him move past. “Nice to meet you officially too, Suh Youngho. Johnny,” he says, and holds out his hand for Johnny to shake, American style.</p><p>Johnny takes it hesitantly and is pleased to note that Taeyong isn’t quite as cold as Jaehyun had been. “You too,” he says somewhat redundantly.</p><p>Taeyong opens the door to the brownstone and steps inside.</p><p>“You’re really not going to say bye to Johnny-hyung?” Johnny hears Jaehyun say loudly. “He came <em>all this way</em>.”</p><p>“Go burn up in the sun, Jaehyun-hyung!” Mark shouts back, and Taeyong snorts.</p><p>Johnny just keeps smiling, raising his right hand. “Bye!” Johnny says, mostly to the closed door, and then drops his hand from where he’s raised it. He supposes he should just go, then. Mark is clearly fine and very well looked after. (Their legal responsibility, whatever that means. Johnny tries not to think too hard about that; that way lies collars.) Before he can step off the doorstep, however, the door opens again, and Mark’s face appears.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Mark says. “Johnny.”</p><p>Johnny just blinks.</p><p>“I’m just—the collar.” Mark makes a gesture with the hand not propping open the door. “I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”</p><p>Johnny closes his mouth, uncertain. Mark stares back, looking like he needs permission to… to <em>leave</em>. “You’re forgiven,” Johnny says finally. “I’m sorry too? For getting you… you know.” He repeats Mark’s hand gesture, trying not to notice how Mark’s eyes track his fingers in the air.</p><p>“Cool,” Mark says. “Uh—bye, then.”</p><p>“Bye,” Johnny agrees.</p><p>Mark shuts the door.</p><p>Johnny goes home, telling himself he doesn’t suddenly feel significantly more at ease.</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
<h4>Thursday, August 31, 2023<br/>
The Blue Moon</h4><p> </p>
<hr/><p>There’s a second full moon in August, only this one doesn’t correspond to any of the twelve names used for them, and so Johnny finds out that this is what they call a Blue Moon. He’s not working that date, his schedule somehow having worked out to his favor, but he finds himself staying up anyway. Part of it is that he’s used to the terrible hours, and part of it is that it’s the <em>full moon</em>, but come one in the morning, Johnny is lying with his head on the floor and his ass on the couch, telling himself it would be stupid to leave his apartment to explore Central Park.</p><p>Jaehyun texted him at twelve forty-five on the dot, letting Johnny know that everything had gone fine and nobody arrested Mark for streaking, because they text now, Jaehyun and Johnny. And Mark and Johnny. They get coffee, hang out constantly, and cook each other meals. Of course Jaehyun doesn’t eat, so mostly Johnny and Mark benefit from his superior cooking and have fun quizzing him about what foods weren’t around when he was born. (Pistachio ice cream, Johnny finds out, was invented in 1940, and Jaehyun was born well before that.)</p><p>Johnny’s even introduced them to Stephanie, although <em>never again</em> was his exact thinking afterwards, since the woman had absolutely no qualms about going toe-to-toe with Jaehyun for sarcasm and general mockery at Johnny’s expense.</p><p>“Is he single?” Stephanie even asked Johnny, and Johnny nearly choked on a glob of pizza and had to be pounded on the back like a baby learning how to eat solid foods before he could respond.</p><p>“He’s—he’s so married that it’s not even funny,” Johnny ended up saying, because he hadn’t told Stephanie about the werewolf and vampire thing. He told himself it was for her own protection, but really it was because Johnny was a coward. He didn’t want to risk losing his best friend over it all. And technically Johnny <em>couldn’t</em> tell her, because there were supernatural rules and all. Johnny was an exception because of the blood in his veins.</p><p>Privately, Mark told Johnny he didn’t mind if he wanted to tell Stephanie. Mark thought that Johnny’s friendships were more important than whatever some random, ancient vampires and werewolves back in Seoul had to say, anyway, and Johnny laughed and told Mark it was fine—he was sure that Mark had enough trouble with Jaehyun buying him “moon boxers” without adding Stephanie Jang into the mix—but he also said Mark was sweet, thought Mark was sweet, concluded that Mark was his favorite, throwing out all of the supernatural aspects.</p><p>Mark and Johnny probably text the most of all—probably hang out the most of all, and even though it’s been only one fucking <em>month</em>… Johnny feels like Mark is an old friend, someone he’d hate to lose.</p><p>Or see thrown into prison or sent to a lab to be dissected.</p><p>Maybe that’s why he’s lying awake staring at his ceiling, worrying his bottom lip the longer the Blue Moon casts silver into his apartment.</p><p>Jaehyun’s message included a fucking <em>selfie</em> with a wolf-Mark. Both of them looked fine and seemed to be having fun in Central Park, but still, Johnny can’t help but wonder… and worry.</p><p>He bites his lip harder. Is he really about to blow some cash on a cab to Manhattan?</p><p>Yes, apparently. And then he’s going to get out of that cab and just start wandering around the park rather aimlessly, starting at the Shakespeare Gardens and heading into the Ramble. All over some idiot who got caught half-naked twice by Johnny, too. Johnny has just managed to convince himself that he’s an idiot who is now out of nearly forty dollars when Mark Lee the werewolf comes barreling out from behind some trees and throws himself against Johnny’s legs.</p><p>Johnny goes down with a graceless, high pitched shriek, but Mark isn’t trying to eat him or anything. He only settles his paws on either side of Johnny’s head and pants at him, large tongue lolling out. His teeth are still horrifyingly sharp and he’s too wolf-like for Johnny to forget he’s not a domesticated predator, but the intelligence behind his eyes is only playful. In fact, as Johnny gapes up at him and tries to get his breath back, Mark wags his oversized tail.</p><p>“Mark,” Johnny gets out of his bruised-feeling lungs. “Hi. I’m… happy to see you?”</p><p>Mark grins even more at him, a giant glob of slobber landing perfectly on Johnny’s right cheek, and Johnny lets the spell break enough to make a face.</p><p>“I’m less happy to see your slobber,” he says, and shoves Mark away with a deep, careful breath. He doesn’t lose a hand, and Mark goes rather docilely, almost looking sad. Johnny finishes wiping down his face and doesn’t let the puppy-dog eyes get to him, rolling to his feet. “God,” he says, once he’s done. “Ow—how much do you even weigh?”</p><p>“Tons,” says a voice in Korean, and Jaehyun appears out of the wooded shadows, dressed this time in short sleeves. Johnny can’t help but notice that the vampire looks considerably healthier than he had all times previous, and that the skin of his right forearm—which last Johnny saw had been mottled and scarred from ending up stuck in the mouth of a werewolf—is blemish-free. As if summoned, Taeyong appears at Jaehyun’s side, dressed similarly for the weather in his own sleeveless number. Johnny notices suddenly he’s got pierced ears—several loops through the upper part of his cartilage, and tiny—ironic—crosses dangling from both bottom holes.</p><p>“Oh,” the other vampire says when he sees Johnny. “So <em>that’s</em> what you meant.”</p><p>Johnny doesn’t have any idea what Taeyong is talking about, but Jaehyun does, and he pouts a little at his… boyfriend. Maker? <em>Sire</em>? Johnny should just stick with “boyfriend.” It’s safer. “Do you feel like sharing with the class?”</p><p>Taeyong casts a look between Johnny and Mark. “Johnny-hyung is obviously Mark’s mate,” he says, and Johnny—</p><p>Johnny stares. “I’m obviously Mark’s <em>what</em>?” he says.</p><p>Jaehyun is looking between Mark and Johnny with large eyes. “Oh my God you’re right,” he says, walking away from Taeyong and coming right between Mark and Johnny. Mark growls, ears going back, and Jaehyun continues easily until he’s right back where he’d started, eyes practically alight. “He’s his <em>mate</em>. Mark-yah! I get it now! You have a hardon for Johnny-hyung because your <em>wolf</em> has a hardon for Johnny-hyung!”</p><p>Mark just glowers back at Jaehyun and continues growling, leaving Johnny to be the one horrified by the statement. “His wolf has a <em>what</em> for me?”</p><p>“A hardon,” says Jaehyun, the same time as Taeyong answers, “Decided you’re his mate.”</p><p>Johnny wants nothing to do with either of those responses. “You know what, I’m just going to go now,” he says, English tumbling out of him nervously as he starts to back away. He only manages one step before he comes to an abrupt halt when Mark turns his gaze on him. He stops rumbling the moment he notices it’s Johnny, so clearly it’s just a reaction to Johnny’s movement, but Johnny’s heart still leaps in his chest and his underarms start to sweat. “Mark,” he says, eyeing the werewolf nervously. “You have to let me go.”</p><p>“He’s not going to let you go,” says Jaehyun. “He hasn’t even eaten his deer carcass. He just took off right away to try to get to you. You live in Queens, yes?”</p><p>Johnny understands Jaehyun’s words, but also doesn’t understand Jaehyun’s words. “Yes?” he says. “No—<em>his deer carcass</em>?”</p><p>Jaehyun disappears into the wood and reappears in a split second, a mother fucking <em>deer carcass</em> draped over one of his shoulders. He drops the thing at Johnny’s feet rather dramatically, as if proving a point. Johnny can only stare. “That’s a deer carcass,” he says.</p><p>“Did I use the wrong word?” says Jaehyun.</p><p>“No—you didn’t—Youngho—”</p><p>“Why have you got a deer carcass?” continues Johnny, ignoring Taeyong. “Where did you even get a deer carcass?”</p><p>Jaehyun looks at him like he thinks Johnny is a particularly audacious bug—which he actually may think, given he’s an immortal vampire and Johnny is—his pet werewolf’s mate—only a human. “From my deer guy,” he says disdainfully, as if Johnny should simply know these things. “He lives in upstate New York and he hunts a lot—you are missing the point.”</p><p>“I’m sorry <em>I </em>am missing the point? You have a <em>deer guy</em>,” says Johnny. “Why do you have a deer guy?”</p><p>“Because I need to get Mark a deer carcass?” Jaehyun shakes his head. “Johnny. Keep up.”</p><p>“Why does Mark need a deer carcass?” shouts Johnny, who should probably stop saying the words “deer carcass” now that they’re back to speaking English, but finds that he can’t stop.</p><p>“To <em>eat</em>, Johnny-hyung.” Jaehyun switches languages as if that was the problem. “We’ve found that if we feed him first thing, he’s pretty docile for the rest of the night.” Jaehyun pulls a face. “He’s been really fussy about it these last two moons, though, which I thought was just because Vincent was fucking with me and giving me subpar deer.”</p><p>“Vincent,” says Johnny. “Your deer guy is named <em>Vincent</em>.”</p><p>“But I guess it was just because he wanted to come and find you,” Jaehyun finishes, paying Johnny no heed. “Which is a relief. It took me ages to work things out with Vincent—I’d hate to have to start over.”</p><p>Johnny’s life is a motherfucking <em>sitcom</em>. “Me,” he manages. “He was trying to find me.”</p><p>“Well, he did keep trying to run us to Queens,” says Jaehyun.</p><p>Johnny gapes. “You <em>leave the park</em>?”</p><p>Jaehyun levels him a look. “How large do you think a wolf’s territory is, Johnny-hyung?”</p><p>“I don’t know—a couple of miles?”</p><p>“At least fifty square miles, sometimes closer to a thousand,” says Jaehyun. “Mark’s wolf thinks he owns all of New York.”</p><p>Johnny has no idea what to do with that information. He settles for looking at Mark, who is at present sniffing around the deer carcass curiously. When Mark sees Johnny looking, he immediately looks back, lips parting and tongue lolling out goofily. It’s kind of cute, Johnny has to admit. Like… beyond the fur, and the size, and the fact that he’s a mythological creature, Mark is kind of cute. Although the dogged seriousness with which he is currently regarding Johnny is more than a little unsettling.</p><p>“You’re going to have to tell him he can eat it,” says Taeyong suddenly. “He won’t eat it until you do,” he adds. “You’re his mate. He’ll want to make sure you’re taken care of first.”</p><p>Johnny… does not know what to say to that. “Sure,” he decides on. “Uh—Mark—” Before he can finish his sentence, Mark closes his jaws around the front half of the dead deer. There’s the sound of bones cracking and flesh tearing, and then Mark sets what looks like part of a front leg in front of Johnny. It’s mostly just bone and maybe something that was once a hoof, and Johnny stares down at it and has the bizarre urge to pick it up and see if the joint would still move. Instead, he looks at Mark.</p><p>Mark whines. His tail thumps against the ground.</p><p>“Thank you,” says Johnny, because it seems like the right thing to do. After another beat, he bends to pick up the… bone. It’s surprisingly smooth to touch and covered in werewolf slobber.</p><p>“Seriously, you’ve got to tell him to eat so that we can get him moving—” Taeyong stops talking abruptly when Johnny hurls the bit of deer leg away from them, sending the thing careening through the trees like a stick.</p><p>“Fetch,” he says when he’s done, and Mark doesn’t even wait for a moment, crashing through the underbrush with a surprising amount of silence for a creature so big. “What?” Johnny gets the sense both vampires are judging him. “He’s just like a really big dog.” Johnny didn’t have dogs growing up, but his neighbors did, and he’s not a complete novice—he dogsat.</p><p>Mark reappears with the leg bone, only he’s too excited not to swallow it, and it ends up at Johnny’s feet as nothing but a few vomited up shards and what is possibly an entire small bush. Mark stares down at his prize, disappointment clear in the droop of his ears.</p><p>Johnny is having an out of body experience. “Don’t worry about it,” he tells Mark. “Uh—you can eat… your deer.” He gestures pointlessly at the rest of the dead deer. “You, uh, you need to keep your strength up—oh my God—” He barely finishes the sentence before Mark turns his attention to the dead deer, covering most of it with his sprawling excuse for a snout. In less than a minute the entire thing is gone, bone and skin swallowed along with all the rest, and Johnny’s mouth goes dry.</p><p>Mark seems particularly pleased with himself once he’s done, turning in a circle a few times and then flopping down onto his haunches in time to give an almighty belch right into Johnny’s face. Several of the surrounding trees spring back into an upright position. The skin of Johnny’s face feels like he’s gone and stuck his head into a wind machine, or out the window of a car going sixty on the highway.</p><p>“Yeah,” says Jaehyun, after a pause. “He’s a really big dog.”</p><p>Johnny flips him off. When Mark seems to eye his hand particularly hopefully, he tentatively reaches up a hand to scratch behind one of his ears. The fur there is soft and very warm, and Mark’s back leg thumps happily as he leans in. Johnny plants his feet and gives Mark a proper scritch and stares pointedly at Jaehyun and Taeyong, as if to say, “See?”</p><p>Both vampires stare back at him, unimpressed.</p><p>The underbrush shifts.</p><p>Mark’s demeanor changes, his leg hitting the ground and his ears flicking forward. His chest hums, the growl he lets out surprisingly not scaring Johnny shitless, and he considers a spot of grass with furious eyes.</p><p>“Uh—” says Johnny, before Mark lunges, snarling now, and emerges seconds later with his jaws wrapped around some sort of animal—</p><p>“Huh, he’s never done that before. Usually, the deer is enough for him. Maybe it <em>was </em>subpar?” says Jaehyun, around the time Johnny realizes that the creature screeching it’s lungs off is a fucking <em>possum</em>.</p><p>“Actually, he’s probably catching it for Johnny-hyung to eat,” offers Taeyong, the use of the honorific normally something Johnny would want to pursue under any other circumstances. “At least I think so. Jungwoo is always bringing Doyoungie things to eat.” He pauses to let the ghost add his two cents, and Johnny concludes that Mark is trying to bring him the thing live so as to not insult him by suggesting he can’t provide for himself. Johnny can in fact recall weird animal facts, although they might be regurgitated stuff from fluff pieces about domestic cats and have nothing to do with wolves. Johnny also concludes that neither Jaehyun nor Taeyong are going to try to save the fucking possum.</p><p>“You—Mark!” shouts Johnny, pointing. “That’s a possum! Why is that a possum? Mark, put down the fucking possum!”</p><p>Mark glances back at Johnny and makes a confused noise around the wailing animal in his mouth, but very gently pulls his teeth back to spit the slobber covered thing on the ground moments afterwards, watching sadly as it takes off for the trees like it’s near-death experience has cemented the fact that it would rather live literally <em>anywhere else</em>.</p><p>“Mark—” Something else moves in the Ramble and Mark stands to attention and Johnny has to put a stop to that right away. “Thank you, but I ate already!” he tells Mark loudly. “Please do not kill anything on my account. Please.” Mark whines, clearly picking up on Johnny’s distress but not really understanding what he’s asking of him, and Johnny swears. “He’s a werewolf,” he reminds himself. “He literally only understands that he’s hungry and he wants to eat—all predators are like that, even if they’re not as big as Mark is. He’s—where is he going—yah—Mark—”</p><p>Jaehyun and Taeyong look up from their discussion to see what Johnny’s shouting about, and seem utterly unruffled to see Mark starting off through the Ramble with his nose to the ground.</p><p>“Oh, good,” says Jaehyun. “I was worried that all he’d want to do was stay here and pee on Youngho-hyung.”</p><p>“Excuse me, I can fucking <em>speak Korean</em>,” snaps Johnny, red in the face and already falling into step with the two of them as they silently shadow the werewolf.</p><p>“Mark-yah,” Taeyong calls, tone soft but still managing to carry. “Remember: <em>no eating humans and absolutely no running off before I can follow you</em>.”</p><p>Johnny’s headache blooms, and he growls before Mark can. “Is there any chance you can warn me before you do that?” he says, one hand pressed against his right eye and the other out towards the ground in case he trips over roots. “Every time you do, my stupid brain feels the need to remind me that I’m related to you and that shit won’t work on me.”</p><p>Taeyong glances quickly at Johnny, almost surprised. “Oh, sorry, I forgot,” he says. “It’s probably worse because I’m more closely—ah—related.”</p><p>Now that he mentions it, Johnny’s headache really does feel worse, like an entire herd of horses have decided to parade directly onto his brain tissue, and not just the usual one. Mark makes another one of those concerned whining noises, falling back and snapping half-heartedly at Taeyong as he goes. Taeyong just swings an arm playfully back at him, and Mark’s tail wags, before the great big weight of him settles right up against Johnny’s left side. He’s warm and comforting, and something about the contact eases Johnny’s headache before it can really start up in earnest.</p><p>“Wow,” Johnny says. “That’s convenient,”</p><p>“What was that—not you—” says Taeyong, but Johnny waves him off, and he goes back to talking with Jaehyun and Doyoung immediately, not at all that bothered.</p><p>Johnny yawns, hiding it behind a hand, and eyes Mark’s giant form reproachfully. “If I get too tired, I don’t suppose you’d let me ride you?”</p><p>He’s not serious—Mark’s big, but he’s not that big—but he swears Mark picks up on his intentions anyway. The werewolf tilts his head at him, pink tongue lolling between his very shiny teeth.</p><p>“You really are just a great big dog,” Johnny mutters to himself, and then hurries to lengthen his stride when Jaehyun calls. “How long are we going to be out here?”</p><p>“Until the sun comes up,” replies Jaehyun. “He usually turns back sometime around four in the morning, but with you here, it might end up being even earlier.”</p><p>At Johnny’s confused silence Taeyong adds, “Don’t ask me to explain the logic but having a mate around makes things easier for werewolves—the change to, the change back, the blood lust—everything. Jungwoo will sometimes wolf for only an hour if Doyoungie is around. And Lucas—”</p><p>“Lucas is an anomaly who can’t be trusted,” interjects Jaehyun. “<em>His</em> mate is an immortal vampire who has the funds to build him a fucking <em>nature reserve</em> in the wilds of Alaska.”</p><p>Taeyong waves a hand. “They still spend most of the full moon fucking as people, even if it does happen inside a nature reserve in Alaska,” he says. “And Ten remains <em>my cousin</em>.”</p><p>“Whatever—your family is incestuous and weird,” says Jaehyun, before looking over his shoulder at Mark and Johnny. “Are you alright, Johnny-hyung? I know you didn’t sign up to pull an all-nighter.”</p><p>Johnny gives up on doing anything else and buries his left hand in the fur at the base of Mark’s neck, trying not to sigh at how nice that feels, how grounding. “I’m good,” he calls back. “I basically pull all-nighters at work, anyway. What’s one more?”</p><p>“Cool,” says Jaehyun. “Mark-yah—get your energy out, we’re about to be in the city.”</p><p>Mark nudges Johnny one last time, and then takes off, disappearing into the wilderness of the Ramble with great joyous bounds.</p><p>Johnny watches him go and thinks—suddenly—that it would be nice if he could follow. Then he chalks it up to lack of sleep, even though he’s just finished assuring Jaehyun that won’t be a problem. But why else would he want to follow Mark through the woods?</p>
<hr/><p>Mark makes it until four a.m., as Jaehyun had promised, and they only run into one drunken New Yorker, which Johnny is stunned by, because the city is fucking <em>dense</em>, and Mark is a fucking <em>giant wolf</em>. But maybe that’s the magic of werewolves, or vampires, or even just… humanity’s unwillingness to engage with things outside their direct sphere of influence—Johnny doesn’t know, and isn’t going to think too much about it, since not being arrested for walking his pet werewolf through Manhattan is actually the optimal outcome.</p><p>The one drunk guy who acknowledges Mark asks Johnny and Taeyong and Jaehyun for autographs, anyway, gazing only briefly at the werewolf when he does so. Mark is still growling—he didn’t like it when the drunk guy told Johnny he was really strong and touched him on the left pectoral—but he quiets when Johnny glares at him. Jaehyun produces a pen, and Johnny signs the man’s arm with something resembling his Korean name. He figures writing <em>Johnny</em> is not going to help his case for pretending to be a K-pop star, but who knows. If he’d gotten an audition, Johnny hopes he’d have been allowed to keep his name.</p><p>“This is my dog… Mark… ward. Like… like Squidward but with… Mark—it’s actually a play on ‘Edward’—my bandmate will sign your arm, now, right, Jaehyun?”</p><p>Johnny hands the pen to Jaehyun, who signs the man’s arm with something that definitely resembles the sentence, <em>You shouldn’t let strangers write on you</em>, and not, <em>Jeong Jaehyun</em>.</p><p>Taeyong takes the pen and very gently follows that up with, <em>But sometimes you do actually run into famous people—don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, fighting!</em></p><p>Johnny smiles at the guy, who squints between the three of them and the still murderous-looking Mark with bleary eyes. “’s a big fucking dog, man,” he slurs, and then lumbers off.</p><p>None of them say anything for a moment, and then Jaehyun clears his throat, stowing his pen.</p><p>Johnny glares. “Do you have something to say, Jaehyun?” Mark adds to his affect by curling a lip in the direction of the vampire—not serious, but enough to show just exactly whose side he’s on. Johnny doesn’t let that make him smug, even though he wants to. Mark and Jaehyun have nearly a year’s history, but Johnny is Mark’s <em>mate</em>. He was upset about that at the start of the evening, but now… well maybe it’s not all bad. Or very bad at all.</p><p>“No.” Jaehyun certainly seems like he has something to say. “I can’t believe you told him Mark was a dog.”</p><p>Johnny pinches the bridge of his nose. “Jaehyun,” he says. “That guy was so drunk he thought the three of us were a K-pop group. If I tell him Mark’s a dog, he’s going to believe Mark is a dog.”</p><p>“<em>I’d </em>be more likely to be a K-pop star,” mutters Jaehyun darkly. “You could maybe be my bodyguard—Taeyongie my boyfriend.” He sighs. “I almost was one, only Yunho-hyung said there’d be trouble once people realized I wasn’t aging.”</p><p>“Don’t worry, Jaehyun-ah,” says Taeyong. “You can always sing just for me.”</p><p>The two of them spend the next few minutes making horrible eyes at each other, and Johnny rolls his eyes. They cross the street under one of the blown out street lights—courtesy of a well-aimed rock from Jaehyun when they left the park the first time—and this time Mark seems content to follow Johnny instead of heading off to run wild through the grass. “I’m sorry you had to put up with them every month,” Johnny tells Mark, who can’t manage the humanity required to roll his eyes, but still huffs agreeably at Johnny regardless.</p><p>“Don’t be jealous, Johnny-hyung,” says Jaehyun. “You’ve got Mark now, yeah?” He grins.</p><p>“Shut up!” shouts back Johnny, cheeks hot. “Where did you bury his clothes?”</p><p>“Oh we didn’t, this time.” Jaehyun comes to a halt somewhere in the middle of the woods near Belvedere and gives Mark a look. “We actually usually don’t—Mark was just doing that in July because I was late.”</p><p>“Makes sense,” Johnny says, watching as Mark puts his nose to the ground and doesn’t seem particularly inclined to change. “Uh… do we have to do something?”</p><p>Jaehyun comes to stand directly next to him with Taeyong in tow, and the three of them regard Mark with calm. “Not usually,” says Jaehyun. “I don’t ever really see it coming. He just sort of—”</p><p>Mark growls, low and from the deepest part of his throat, and drops face down towards the ground, snarling.</p><p>“Turns,” finishes Jaehyun, as the chirping of early morning birds coincides with Mark’s return to being man-shaped, limbs changing and breaking and losing all the fur. Johnny half expects Mark to be bruised and bloody when it’s done, but Mark’s skin is smooth and perfect, give or take a few ropes of scars.</p><p>“Those are from me,” says Jaehyun, catching Johnny’s gaze. “I told you I just have to smack him. Sometimes he hits back, or he wants to play.”</p><p>“He gets very upset if you pull punches,” adds Taeyong, stepping forward to kneel beside Mark and touch him on the shoulder. “Mark-yah—are you awake?”</p><p>Mark doesn’t move for a few more seconds, but then he groans, the noise coming out hoarse and rattling, even though he’d mostly been growling and occasionally giving a yip. “Taeyong-hyung?” he says, twisting to see. “Jaehyun-hyung… <em>Johnny-hyung</em>?” Mark ignores the clothes Taeyong tries to hand him and shoves to his feet, standing in the middle of Central Park actually naked this time staring at Johnny like he holds the answers to fucking immortal life. Given that Mark’s other companions actually do… Johnny feels suitably warmed.</p><p>“Uh… hi,” he says. “Nice to see… all of… you.”</p><p>Mark glances down at himself and seems to realize he’s naked, flushing all the way down his chest in a great wave. “Oh, <em>fuck</em>—” This time he takes the shirt Taeyong hands him, pulling it on and already reaching for the sweats Jaehyun provides him.</p><p>“Where the hell were you keeping those?” says Johnny, and only gets a grin in return.</p><p>“The same place I was keeping the deer carcass.”</p><p>Johnny flips Jaehyun off.</p><p>“Sorry.” Mark speaks and Johnny looks quickly at him, unable to help himself. “Johnny-hyung. Sorry that you came out again for me.” He really does sound apologetic, and Johnny just wants to give him a hug. It’s strange, but he feels like there’s suddenly all this distance between them. Distance that wasn’t there when Mark was a wolf, and Johnny only had to smile at him before he’d grin right back.</p><p>“It was no trouble,” he says. “I wasn’t working. Nobody called you in as a streaker. I was—I was in the area.” It sounds ridiculous saying it out loud like that, but the fact that Johnny took a taxi to Central Park <em>is </em>ridiculous.</p><p>“You’d probably have dragged us to visit Johnny-hyung, if it helps,” puts in Taeyong, after two more seconds of just Johnny and Mark staring awkwardly at each other. “Given that he’s your mate.” He twirls, smiling at Johnny with pearly white fangs. “What’s your address? Let me give you a lift—you look exhausted.”</p><p>“Do you mean in your car?” says Johnny, even as the rest of him starts protesting that he and Mark should talk about this. Mark is standing frozen with his mouth open staring at Johnny, visible behind Taeyong’s left shoulder.</p><p>“Johnny-hyung, please.” Taeyong smiles even wider, before darting in close to peck Jaehyun on the mouth. “Don’t be jealous, Jaehyunnie. It’s only because I know you need to go to work.” Jaehyun’s an architect—a fact that still gives Johnny great bemusement—because he’d done everything else and then some, and had at one point in however many centuries traded words with a particularly impressive six-year-old who insisted she wanted to become an architect so that she could make circular classrooms without any corners for time-outs.</p><p>“Ugh, don’t remind me,” groans Jaehyun, kissing Taeyong back.</p><p>Johnny blinks. “Why would he be jealous—”</p><p>“<em>Stay</em>,” Taeyong and Jaehyun tell Mark simultaneously, and then Taeyong reaches forward to heft Johnny up and onto his back like something out of a bad movie, and the entire ground lurches.</p><p>Johnny determines the safest course of action is to close his eyes, but he still ends up vomiting horribly into his kitchen sink a few minutes later, cursing Taeyong out mentally. Thankfully he’s home and standing with two feet on the ground, but Johnny is still not sure he’ll ever stop having double vision.</p><p>Both versions of Taeyong just keep watching him from their place in Johnny’s doorway, propping open the door, unable to come inside.</p><p>“You can come”—Johnny turns on the tap and drinks straight out of it until he starts to feel a little more alive, then shoves his entire face under there and counts to five, letting the cool water ground him even more—“you can come in,” he says once he’s done, reaching for a dish towel and drying off his eyes. “God. Never, ever do that to me again.” It was a lot sexier when it happened to people in the movies, that’s for sure. Bella Swan didn’t vomit all over Edward. Johnny pauses with the towel to his eyes, the name “Edward” producing a memory of him saying the words “This is my dog <em>Markward</em>… like <em>Squidward</em>… only <em>Mark</em>.” “On second thought, do that to me again and kill me this time—oh my God,” says Johnny, dropping the dish towel onto the counter beside the sink and taking a shaky step back.</p><p>Taeyong takes a careful step into Johnny’s apartment, seemingly pleased when he meets no resistance. “Sorry,” he says, ignoring Johnny’s nonsense. “I could knock you out next time.”</p><p>“Next time,” repeats Johnny, finally feeling solid on his feet. “There’s not going to be a next time, Taeyong-hyung.”</p><p>“Taeyong,” Taeyong corrects. “I’m only twenty-five—and have been for nearly two hundred years, of course, but still.”</p><p>Johnny just shakes his head, too drained suddenly to fight him. “Never again, Taeyong.”</p><p>Taeyong smiles. “Fine,” he says. “You’ll just have to get Mark to shift in less than an hour, like Jungwoo does. That way you won’t have to stay up quite so late.”</p><p>Johnny blinks. “I—what does that even mean—Taeyong—Taeyong!”</p><p>But Taeyong is gone, disappeared back out Johnny’s door without even a “by your leave.”</p><p>Johnny crosses to make sure his door is properly closed, and scowls. He only has three hours until he has to be at work, and fuck if he’s not spending as much of those hours as possible dead asleep. He’ll deal with the mate stuff later.</p>
<hr/><p>Later ends up being less than two hours later, when Johnny is woken from restless sleep by a knocking on his door. He drags himself upright and resigns himself to eyebags and a fuck ton of coffee to find a freshly showered Mark Lee standing at his door, practically radiating nerves. He’s dressed in a black t-shirt and khaki shorts and wearing a messenger bag, ink smudges all over his fingers like he took the subway and spent the entire time writing—Mark’s an author, Johnny’s brain supplies suddenly, and he’s currently in the process of writing the next great American novel to rival his first, which he refuses to share with Johnny since it’s under a pseudonym—Mark’s talking, words tumbling out of his pretty mouth in the same low, rasping voice from that morning, and Johnny gives himself a mental slap to focus.</p><p>“—I’m so sorry—Taeyong-hyung explained everything and I still don’t really get it but I’m going to call Jungwoo first thing and then I should understand, and I promise I’ll make Jaehyun-hyung practice compelling me until he can get me to stay away from your apartment, honestly, please don’t hate me,” says Mark in rapid, nervous-sounding English.</p><p>Johnny has to blink for a few seconds before he manages to get any of that to make sense, and even after he’s done that, he has questions. “You’re talking about how we’re mates, whatever that means,” he says, and Mark actually flinches.</p><p>But then he smiles, trying on something resembling bravery. “Yeah. Taeyong-hyung says it’s this one in a million thing that only happens for some wolves during their lifetime? You know how—uh—<em>real wolves</em> mate for life?” Mark pauses, before picking up nervous steam. “I mean not always for life <em>for life</em>; because if one of them dies it’d be pretty stupid for them not to move on. And, also, I think there’s been research into wolves bonding with different wolves for different years—and it makes the most sense for female wolves to want the strongest and fittest male to father their children—not that I’m a female wolf—”</p><p>“Mark,” Johnny says, taking pity on him, even as some part of him starts to think all the rambling is cute. “Breathe. Go back to what you were saying about how you didn’t want me to <em>hate you</em>?”</p><p>Mark ducks his head even more as if to make himself smaller, an action that is at odds with his and Johnny’s height difference. It’s almost like Mark hasn’t figured out he’s smaller than Johnny—or more like his body hasn’t quite <em>remembered</em>. Johnny thinks about how not three hours ago Mark was a giant lumbering werewolf (although he supposes technically speaking Mark at present is still a werewolf, just not giant or lumbering) and gets it.</p><p>“I—my point is the mate thing is not—it’s not <em>sexual</em>.” Mark makes a face like even saying this much is something he really doesn’t want to be doing, and Johnny wonders what sorts of conversations he had with Jaehyun and Taeyong. As if reading Johnny’s mind, Mark offers, “Jaehyun-hyung is an asshole and also fucking reads <em>werewolf porn</em>.”</p><p>Johnny decides not to address that. “Okay.”</p><p>“It’s just—I don’t know what it is, hence me calling Jungwoo, but it doesn’t have to be a big deal or anything—we can just. If you never want to see me again that’s fine,” says Mark, for the <em>second time</em>, and Johnny needs to wake the fuck up <em>now</em>.</p><p>“Mark,” he says. “I would never not want to see you again.” Mark looks like he’s having trouble with that double negative, so Johnny adds, not really thinking, “I love spending time with you.”</p><p>Mark’s cheeks go bright pink. “Oh,” he says.</p><p>Johnny rubs a hand at the back of his neck to hide his awkwardness. “I guess I don’t get why you would even think that—I’m not going to be weird about this just because you—your <em>wolf</em> has decided it, uh, <em>likes </em>me, as it were.” Johnny has to try to salvage this conversation fast, and also steer it away from the earlier discussion of werewolf porn with great haste. “I get that that’s not you—like, it’s the wolf who thinks I’m your mate—is all I’m saying,” he finishes. He really wishes Mark would say something and put him out of his misery. “So of course we can still be friends.”</p><p>Mark is silent for a very long time.</p><p>“Unless you don’t want that,” Johnny rushes to say, the thought horrible but unshakable once it forms. Maybe Mark doesn’t want to be friends. Maybe Mark resents Johnny now, since Johnny’s this thing his wolf-self picked out for himself, without consulting the rest of him. Maybe Mark’s rambling on about how it’s okay if Johnny never wants to see him again because Mark doesn’t want to see Johnny again—like reverse psychology only more painful. “That’d be fine too—if you don’t ever want to see me. I mean we haven’t known each other for that long—”</p><p>“Johnny-hyung,” interrupts Mark. “I don’t want to never see you again.”</p><p>This time Johnny has to work to unravel the double negative.</p><p>“We can be—we can be friends,” continues Mark. “I—it’s what you said, yeah. The”—he swallows, clearly trying to reform human words, which Johnny thinks is odd for a second since it’s been like twenty-four hours, but then, what does he know—“it’s like you said. About the mate stuff? That’s just the wolf and not… me.”</p><p>Johnny nods. “Okay, awesome,” he says. He has the sudden urge to hug Mark, and gives in, pulling back once he realizes it hasn’t helped his stomach to unknot. “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” he adds. “See you around?”</p><p>Mark stares at him for another long moment. “Yeah,” he says finally. “I’ll see you around.”</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
<h4>Friday, September 29, 2023<br/>
The Corn Moon</h4><p> </p>
<hr/><p>Johnny is sick during The Corn Moon. He wakes up that morning feeling like death warmed over, somehow calls out of work, and closes his eyes in an attempt to sleep it off. Eventually he gets up to shower and eat breakfast, but registers very little of both those things; he only knows he’s managed them once he’s sitting huddled over his breakfast nook with wet hair, trying to force down toast. It’s really just bread—the toaster was beyond him—but Johnny hopes it’s still covered under BRAT.</p><p>His entire body feels way too hot, yet simultaneously way too cold. His joints ache. When he squints down at his phone to try to contact someone to let them know that he quite possibly might be dying, it keeps shouting at him about how today is “moon day.” Johnny has no idea what that means at all.</p><p>He must manage the texts, because someone brings him lunch—Stephanie?—and then someone else shows up and cooks him dinner—Jaehyun? Maybe? Or Taeyong?—and then suddenly it’s pitch dark and Johnny is waking from fever dreams to the sounds of two vampires breaking into his apartment, the red glow of his alarm clock making his head hurt even more.</p><p>He doesn’t realize they’re breaking in for almost a minute. He doesn’t even really remember that they’re vampires at first—only recognizes Taeyong and Jaehyun’s voices and wills his heartbeat to slow back down. It’s not like they’re mean, dangerous vampires. They’re nice. Johnny likes them.</p><p>“We didn’t have a fucking <em>choice</em>,” hisses Jaehyun, clearly doing his best to whisper from his place probably out in the hall. “What were we going to do? Let him stay outside in the hallway all night? Someone would have seen him and called animal control.”</p><p>That’s got to be about Mark—the werewolf—and Johnny’s just doped up enough on pain killers not to question why he knew both of those things immediately, when even standing upright for more than five seconds has been beyond him for the past twelve or so hours.</p><p>Taeyong mostly seems concerned about the lack of security in Johnny’s building, muttering something about how, “I can’t believe he has an old-fashioned door lock,” and then continuing, “You broke in using a fucking <em>bobby pin</em>.”</p><p>“It’s America,” Jaehyun says. “No—Mark—get off Johnny-hyung’s sofa.”</p><p>Johnny squints into the darkness trying to see before he realizes his door is closed so it’s not like he’d be able to regardless.</p><p>“Do you think he’ll just sniff around and then we can leave?” says Taeyong suddenly, and Johnny puts both hands on his cheeks and holds.</p><p>The clock reads one-fifteen in the morning, so Mark must have made good time on his way across town. One-fifteen also means Johnny might be due to take more medicine, but the pill bottle is very far away, and the glass of water looks large enough for him to spill.</p><p>“Maybe,” answers Jaehyun from outside the bedroom. “Or—no—<em>Mark</em>.”</p><p>It takes Johnny a few terrible moments to realize Jaehyun has laced some compulsion into Mark’s name, because his head feels so terrible anyway that the added pain doesn’t really register. But then it consumes him in earnest, and he groans. “Jaehyun-ah.” Jaehyun’s name comes out sounding like Johnny’s a dead man. “Get the fuck out of my house.”</p><p>There’s silence from outside Johnny’s bedroom, and then something very large must nudge up against the door, because there’s a thud.</p><p>“No, Mark, come on—you need to let Johnny-hyung sleep. Can’t you hear he’s sick?”</p><p>This time there’s scratching at Johnny’s bedroom door, accompanied by a very sad sounding whine.</p><p>By all means the noise should make Johnny’s head hurt more, but instead it’s sort of soothing. “Mark-yah,” he says. “You’ve got to eat your deer carcass… keep up your strength.”</p><p>“Yes—he did do that before he headed for you this time, Johnny-hyung, but thank you!” calls Jaehyun.</p><p>Johnny tries to flip him off. “I think I’m dying,” he slurs. “Go on without me. Don’t eat anyone.”</p><p>“You—I think we should open the door just to make sure he’s okay,” Jaehyun tells Taeyong. Then there’s the sound of Johnny’s bedroom door opening, before something comes thundering across the floor to try to smother Johnny in his bed.</p><p>Johnny groans, grunting under the weight and not really capable of more than a few syllables, which somehow approximates Mark’s name. “Mark—oof.”</p><p>“No—Mark—you’re way too big to fit on the bed.”</p><p>The weight disappears, and Johnny spends precious seconds heaving air back into his lungs before he manages to get his eyes open enough to see in the dark. He can barely make out Mark, who’s large and dark and mostly glowing, glinting eyes, but he can sort of see Taeyong and Jaehyun, who are pale pillars on either side of the lump that must be Mark, holding him back from where he’d been smothering Johnny.</p><p>“Hey,” croaks Johnny. “Fancy seeing you all here.”</p><p>Mark yips, lunging forward, but even his massive form is no match for two vampires.</p><p>“’s pretty cool,” says Johnny. “I see what you mean about. Precautions.” He thinks he’s doing a good job speaking intelligibly, but the lack of a response from the peanut gallery seems to beg to differ.</p><p>Finally, Jaehyun clears his throat. “Mark,” he says. Johnny doesn’t think he’s using compulsion but his head still <em>hurts</em>. “You’re too big to get on the bed.” Jaehyun does kind of sound strained, now that Johnny thinks about it. For some reason, that makes him smug.</p><p>He tries to grin. “Good job,” he tries to tell Mark.</p><p>Mark must react. “God—Mark—come on,” snaps Jaehyun.</p><p>“Mark-yah, <em>get on the floor next to bed</em>,” commands Taeyong.</p><p>Johnny doesn’t even feel it this time, so… “Maybe being sick isn’t that bad.” Although he does think that he might like to one day be able to breathe with his mouth closed again.</p><p>“If you bite me, I swear—”</p><p>Johnny blinks open bleary eyes and finds Jaehyun’s concerned face staring down at him, pale skin illuminated by light from the window. The vampire places the back of a blessedly cool palm to Johnny’s forehead, concern touching both corners of his mouth.</p><p>“I think you have a fever,” Jaehyun says.</p><p>“Why would I bite you?” Johnny says.</p><p>Jaehyun just sighs. “I’m assuming you did take something for the fever?”</p><p>Johnny can’t really remember so he just stares at Jaehyun blankly, wondering if the rest of him is as cold as his hand. Jaehyun’s skin is very, very pale and very, very pretty. Johnny wants to touch his nose, just to make sure it’s real. Nobody real should have a nose like that—</p><p>“Right.” Jaehyun disentangles from Johnny’s grabbing fingers with an embarrassing amount of ease. Sickness… Johnny is going to blame it on that later, because he spends hours in the gym working on his very impressive muscles, even though that same sickness might be atrophying those very muscles as he speaks… thinks. “I’m just going to assume you did to avoid overdosing you.”</p><p>“You’re speaking Korean,” Johnny says, still reaching for Jaehyun’s face despite the fact that the vampire has both of his hands very carefully enclosed in his own. “I understand you.”</p><p>“Yes, and I’m sure your mother would be very happy to hear that.”</p><p>“My mother,” repeats Johnny. “I need to call my mother—tell her I haven’t died—”</p><p>“You need to go to sleep,” Taeyong says, but Johnny can’t see him without turning his head, and turning his head is a terrible idea, so he decides just to ignore him.</p><p>“I’ll call her,” Jaehyun offers. “I’ll call her—Johnny-hyung please calm down.”</p><p>Something has been making a horrible hacking noise and Johnny rapidly realizes it’s him—his lungs, trying frantically to draw in air. Mark whines, drawing Johnny’s attention despite the vertigo, and Johnny does his best to curb his panic. “I already called her,” he determines, the memory coming back to him in a flash. “Before I went to bed. She—she made me take meds.”</p><p>“That’s good, Johnny-hyung,” says Jaehyun. “Go back to sleep, now.”</p><p>For a moment Johnny wants to argue simply because how dare he tell him what to do—Johnny is the police officer—but then Mark whines again, and Johnny subsides. “Fine,” he says, more than a little petulantly. “Mark can totally fit in my bed.”</p><p>There’s a beat, a thud that can only be Mark’s great big paws, and then Jaehyun and Taeyong both exclaiming, “Johnny-hyung, please!” as Mark makes the leap from floor to mattress.</p><p>At some point in the night Johnny and Mark determine Mark really would be better off on the floor, but then Johnny worries he’ll get cold and makes Jaehyun go get him the spare blanket in his broom closet, culminating in Johnny throwing off his own covers and joining Mark on the hardwood floor.</p><p>“Hyung—you—you know what, fine,” says Jaehyun, shifting to accommodate Johnny from his place on the floor. He’s been leaning up against Mark’s flank doing something on his phone for the past however many minutes, but now he sets the device aside to protest.</p><p>Johnny doesn’t give a shit, just finishes finding the most comfortable place on top of his giant werewolf and goes the fuck back to sleep.</p><p>Sometime later than that, Johnny feels fingers on his cheeks, forehead, and finally at his lips, and the deep rumbling of Mark’s growl.</p><p>There’s the sharp sound of an inhale, a shift in the night that puts Johnny’s disease-ridden body on edge, and Mark’s growls pick up in pitch.</p><p>Somebody—Jaehyun? <em>Taeyong</em>?—says, “Relax, Mark-yah, I’m not going to turn your boyfriend—you can calm down—he’s got a really nasty fever and this will help him. I promise in no universe am I interested in creating the world’s next vampire-werewolf pair.”</p><p>Johnny furrows his brow hard, too tired to make much sense of that, and when he parts his lips to speak, someone presses a glass against them and has him drink. The water tastes funny, but it helps the more Johnny drinks, and he finds himself reluctant to give up the glass even when it’s done.</p><p>“There, see,” says definitely-Jaehyun. “Just enough to get his fever to go down. You big lug.” There’s a thump, Mark makes a disgruntled noise, and Johnny takes a moment to appreciate the fact that he can see so much more of his ceiling than he previously could before the exhaustion sets back in. “Go back to sleep, Johnny-hyung. I guarantee we’re not going anywhere—he’d eat us if we tried.”</p><p>“Mark would never eat you, you’re too immortal,” Johnny tries to say, but he thinks it probably gets lost somewhere along the way. One of Mark’s paw’s shifts to better accommodate Johnny’s head as a pillow, and Johnny closes his eyes.</p><p>He dreams of being a man in a country he tries to reconcile with his trips to South Korea as a teenager and finds he can’t, the whole thing much more reminiscent of old movies, or his grandparent’s stories. He dreams of Taeyong’s face, pale and lovely and kind, and then pale and lovely with fangs glinting devilishly, bent over him carefully with intent in his eyes. He feels <em>afraid</em>, one moment of horror in the midst of something Johnny feels that he asked for, but Mark is a solid weight against him, and when Johnny snuggles closer, the images reside.</p><p>Johnny sleeps.</p>
<hr/><p>The first thing Johnny becomes aware of the next morning is the sun shining directly into his eyes, but it doesn’t hurt. Instead of feeling aches and pains all over, Johnny just feels content—like he’s had the best sleep of his life. When he opens his eyes, the sun does make him shut them again, although it’s not for the reasons he’d expect. It’s not that the rays of light are putting a needle through his brain tissue, more like they’re still oddly overwhelming. Johnny rolls away from the experience feeling surprisingly limber and ends up on his stomach in the middle of his bed, frowning.</p><p>His nose is clear.</p><p>His head is fine.</p><p>His throat, while dry as a bone, does not hurt.</p><p>When he lifts his head, nothing buzzes in his ears. When he moves his head, nothing lurches in his stomach. In fact, despite knowing his stomach is resoundingly empty, Johnny doesn’t even feel hungry.</p><p>For two moments, he lies there and doesn’t understand.</p><p>Then he has a thought and practically falls out of his bed in his haste to get to the kitchen, one hand shoving into his mouth to check on the state of his canines.</p><p>Someone gave him blood last night.</p><p>Someone gave him <em>blood </em>last night. Mark got pissed about that—growled—and Jaehyun said—</p><p><em>Relax, Mark-yah, I’m not going to turn your boyfriend</em>, Johnny remembers, around the time he slides into his kitchen counter and notes the pristine condition of his entire place, like Taeyong was doing some late September cleaning while Jaehyun was babysitting Mark and Johnny (They’d? Slept together in a pile on Johnny’s floor next to his bed?).</p><p>Johnny’s teeth feel normal.</p><p>On his fridge, written in bright bubblegum pink with a pen that <em>has</em> to belong to Jaehyun, is a note further meant to calm Johnny’s nerves.</p><p><em>Johnny.</em> <em>You probably feel a lot better, which is just because I gave you some blood. Don’t worry, you’re not going to turn undead and nocturnal. Promise. J. </em>Johnny does think the winking face Jaehyun drew next to the letter J he signed the note with sort of ruins the effect it’s meant to have, but he still breathes a little easier, glad he doesn’t have to call home with <em>that </em>news. He goes back into his room in search of his phone regardless, since he should still probably <em>call home</em>. His mom knew he was sick, after all. She’d threatened to get on the first plane the moment she heard him attempt to assure her he was fine and would survive the weekend.</p><p>His phone is on the bedside where he’d left it, and Johnny takes a small moment to appreciate the fact that Taeyong cleaned <em>the whole of his apartment</em>, before swiping it unlocked and walking back into his kitchen. <kbd>Mom, I’m alive. Jaehyun gave me some of his blood? Not enough to turn me but would not recommend.</kbd></p><p>Shockingly, Johnny’s mother doesn’t respond to that series of messages immediately, and Johnny checks the time. Noon on a Saturday. His mom’s probably out with friends, or something. Still, Johnny wishes she was around, because like clockwork, upon figuring out it’s lunch time, Johnny’s stomach finally growls.</p><p>Which is around the time he realizes that there’s a plate of something that looks like a sad attempt at eggs sitting in the middle of his kitchen counter.</p><p>Johnny stares. Closer inspection reveals that there’s a post-it-note stuck to the plate; Johnny walks over and tugs it off the plastic, blinking his way through the information written there on autopilot. It’s from Mark, signed with his name in scrawled, hurried script, and it explains that the contents of the plate <em>are</em> in fact eggs.</p><p>Johnny shifts over in the kitchen to pull a fork out of his silverware drawer, not sure what his emotions are doing. Mark’s eggs are… something, he concludes, stabbing a bit of them tentatively and wincing at the consistency. Edible, maybe? Hopefully? Johnny sets down the fork and taps his phone screen to distract himself from what he’s about to eat. Then he notices he has unread text messages.</p><p>Stephanie wants to know that he’s still alive and also if <em>Taeyong</em> is single, which confirms who fed Johnny dinner last night. <kbd>No, tragically, he’s the one Jaehyun is super married to. P.S. I’m alive!</kbd> replies Johnny, and she messages back almost immediately.</p><p>
  <kbd>Of course they’re married to each other. Beautiful people really do only marry beautiful people.</kbd>
</p><p><kbd>Hey, you’re beautiful too!</kbd> says Johnny.</p><p>
  <kbd>Thanks, John. Now I know you’re still dying.</kbd>
</p><p>
  <kbd>Piss off!</kbd>
</p><p>Stephanie just sends him the laughing emoji, twice.</p><p>The other messages are from Jaehyun, and Johnny clicks over to that text thread curiously, wondering what Jaehyun could possibly want to say to him that wasn’t covered in his own note. <em>Sorry, you are actually going to turn into a vampire</em>, maybe? Johnny pokes a finger into his mouth again as his phone loads, and then pauses.</p><p>All that Jaehyun has sent him is a photo, and when Johnny clicks on it to look at it at full size, he’s lucky he’s got a finger in his mouth to muffle the noise he makes. First Johnny thinks Jaehyun has just sent him a photo of Mark, who’s surprisingly less scary in the light of day. But then Johnny notices that it’s not just Mark—it’s Mark and Johnny, who is lying on the floor on his back mostly covered by one of Mark’s great forelegs and snoring with his mouth open. Mark’s head is right next to Johnny’s like some sort of nightmare excuse for a pillow, but Johnny is far more focused on the part of the picture where it shows his left hand, visibly curled tightly in a bit of Mark’s fur.</p><p>Johnny stares down at the hand in question and slowly forms it into a fist, trying to see if he can remember. He remembers being warm, and comfortable, and not much of anything else.</p><p><kbd>You have to admit, mate shit aside, the two of you are pretty fucking cute</kbd>, reads Jaehyun’s message after the photo, and Johnny’s cheeks burn. <kbd>Speaking of mate shit, though…</kbd> Jaehyun continues, unruffled at—Johnny squints at the time stamp—six in the morning and probably still unruffled now, at twelve p.m. He’s followed that cryptic sentence with two more photos—several screencaps of a conversation he had with someone named <kbd>Zeus</kbd> in his phone.</p><p>It takes Johnny a couple more seconds to source the name Zeus as Jungwoo, the werewolf who bit Mark back in October. Jungwoo lives in Seoul and is in a relationship with Taeyong’s ghost friend Doyoung, who Johnny is still not entirely sure he believes actually exists. He can’t remember why Jaehyun and Mark call Jungwoo “Zeus.”</p><p>He clicks on the photo, not sure what to expect.</p><p><kbd>What does it mean when a werewolf finds their mate?</kbd> Jaehyun begins the conversation, at the top of the screen.</p><p>Johnny nearly drops the phone.</p><p><kbd>Haha, why?</kbd> Jungwoo responds, only a minute after that. A few minutes later he actually starts to answer—which probably says more about his and Jaehyun’s relationship than anything else. <kbd>Well it’s nothing like all that Stephanie Meyer bullshit, if that’s what you’re asking</kbd>, Jungwoo says. <kbd>I wouldn’t be attracted to Doyoung-hyung if he were a baby.</kbd></p><p>Johnny hadn’t realized Doyoung the ghost and Jungwoo the werewolf were that serious, or that a werewolf’s mate could even be someone… deceased. But he supposes that puts a whole new spin on “till death do us part.”</p><p><kbd>She did get some of it right</kbd>, Jungwoo goes on to say. <kbd>Like the whole… “everything changing” bit. Part of being a werewolf is being constantly afraid of yourself. Every month I turn into a raging predator that mostly wants to eat and doesn’t discriminate as to what. And you know we live nearly as long as you do.</kbd></p><p><kbd>Old man</kbd>, interjects Jaehyun.</p><p><kbd>Younger than you in both ways</kbd>, replies Jungwoo.</p><p>
  <kbd>Barely.</kbd>
</p><p>Johnny hadn’t known werewolves lived nearly as long as vampires did. He’d just assumed Jungwoo was maybe Mark’s age, give or take a year, the few times he’d seen photos. He doesn’t know how he feels about learning that’s not the case.</p><p><kbd>It’s a lonely, terrifying existence</kbd>, continues Jungwoo several emoji later, and Johnny begins to understand why Jaehyun included this screencap. <kbd>People die—you know that most of all—but people around werewolves tend to die the worst of all. After every moon I wake up and worry I haven’t been careful enough and have hurt someone I care about. Or worse, someone I don’t. I’m afraid of myself. I can never trust myself.</kbd></p><p>Johnny shoves a hand through his hair and blinks back the moisture gathering at the corner of his eyes.</p><p><kbd>But with Doyoung-hyung.</kbd> There’s about a five-minute gap between this message and Jungwoo’s next one, and Johnny tries not to read too much into that. <kbd>I suppose it would be different if he was, you know, corporeal.</kbd></p><p>Johnny is going to have to really start believing in ghosts, he guesses.</p><p><kbd>He’s the only person I feel safe with</kbd>, writes Jungwoo. <kbd>Because I know I’d never hurt him. The wolf would never hurt him. Even though nothing can, because he’s dead. And before you get all fussy, I know I’m the wolf. Believe me, I know that better than anyone.</kbd></p><p>Johnny has to blink harder the longer he reads, memories of conversations he’s had with Mark rushing to the front of his mind. There was that time Mark told Johnny he originally met Jaehyun when he chained himself up in an abandoned building, the words, “Oh those? Those are silver so none of us can do anything about them and they’re kind of just stuck in my fucking apartment because I wasn’t about to leave them at a construction site like some sort of crime scene,” coming out like that was a completely normal thing to say to someone when they asked you why you had a set of full metal chains in your fucking hall closet.</p><p>Johnny took the chains out to the dumpster that same day, and would have none of Mark’s insistence on him at least selling them—“They’re pure silver, you know, I have a guy,” Mark said.</p><p>“I can’t believe you have a <em>silver guy</em>,” Johnny said, and Mark looked at him a hair too long before he smiled, careful to mention Vincent the deer guy as if he’d ever met the guy in person, just so Johnny would smile, and move the conversation along.</p><p>There were all the times Mark refused to go into detail about the various full moons he’d experienced. He was always changing the subject, always returning Johnny’s questions about the intricacies of werewolves and the change with links to the wiki for the television show <em>Teen Wolf</em>.</p><p>“I don’t really remember any of that,” Mark said one time. “And you know I’m perfectly normal when I’m like this—I mean. Maybe I got taller, back in October—I might still be growing.” He put his hand up as if to compare himself to Johnny, and Johnny laughed.</p><p>There was the last full moon—the blue one—where Johnny told Mark it didn’t matter if the wolf thought they were meant to be, or whatever, since the wolf wasn’t<em> fucking Mark</em>. How Mark’s face went blank, how it took him two seconds before he could respond—how Johnny… <em>didn’t fucking notice</em>, just kept running his mouth.</p><p>There’s how Mark is the first-person Johnny texts, most mornings. How they’ve got all of these hilarious inside jokes. Jaehyun and Taeyong are ancient immortal beings for whom learning languages is akin to drinking water, but it’s clear they have a preference for Korean. There’s no reason for Jaehyun to know what a bop is, or for Taeyong to understand the intricacies of a meme. Johnny texts shit into their groupchat and neither vampire deigns him with a response, but Mark’s always right there, laughing, helping Johnny poke fun.</p><p>Stephanie keeps calling them love birds, and Johnny thought it was just to annoy him, but… clearly—</p><p>Mark’s sorry excuse for an omelet is practically staring at him accusingly from the plate. Johnny picks up the fork and shovels in a mouthful, tasting nothing.</p><p><kbd>I’m even scared with you</kbd>, writes Jungwoo. <kbd>I know firsthand just how unbreakable you are, but I still wake up afraid. What if I bite off the hand with your ring or somehow pull off your necklace? It’s awful. But with a mate…</kbd></p><p>There’s another pause in the middle of Jungwoo’s messages and Johnny sets down the fork and swallows his final bite of Mark’s omelet, not sure how he ate all of it. His nose feels clogged. His eyes hurt. When he swallows, it feels like swallowing rocks.</p><p>“Fuck you, Jaehyun,” he rasps, wiping at his face, and grabbing the napkin that Mark very carefully set aside for him to mop around his mouth. “Fuck… you.”</p><p>He’d really rather be cursing <em>himself</em>, but Jaehyun will do. Johnny doesn’t even know which self he’d most like to yell at. The Johnny Suh who was too newly miraculously recovered from a hundred-and-three-degree fever to wake up and catch Mark mid-making-an-omelet, or the Johnny Suh of August 31, 2023, who was too cowardly to deal with the fact that he might have been growing feelings for the boy who turned into a mythological beast every month.</p><p>He picks up and unlocks his phone.</p><p><kbd>I feel safe</kbd>, says Jungwoo. <kbd>I feel like I’m home. I never want him to leave, or to leave him. I. I feel like I’m boring you. Am I boring you, Jaehyun-hyung?</kbd></p><p>Jaehyun assures Jungwoo with platitudes of, <kbd>Of course not. You could never</kbd>, but Johnny doesn’t do more than skim over them. Johnny throws down his phone, stands, and tears frantically through his apartment in search of real-people clothes. He has to take a moment when he nearly trips on the blanket on his floor where wolf-Mark and he apparently laid <em>cuddling </em>and nearly breaks down even more.</p><p><em>Johnny-hyung, hi</em>, Mark’s note read in surprisingly pretty hangul. <em>I made you breakfast. </em>There was a full line break. <em>I don’t know why I made you breakfast.</em> Another break. <em>I guess I just didn’t want to leave you—your apartment.</em> The “you” was crossed out furiously, but Johnny could still read it, could still understand. <em>Anyway, I hope you like eggs! </em>Two lines this time, then, scrawled hurriedly in English like Jaehyun and Taeyong were actively dragging him out of Johnny’s apartment, <em>God, are these even really eggs? Mark.</em></p><p>“Fuck,” Johnny says, throwing on jeans and a t-shirt and shoving his wallet and phone into one pocket. Then he slaps on some sandals and leaves.</p><p>He doesn’t even think about the train schedule.</p><p>All he thinks about is how fast he needs to get to Mark.</p>
<hr/><p>Mark answers the door wearing sweatpants and nothing else. That’s enough to derail Johnny’s train of thought for six horrifying seconds, but rapidly he pulls himself together and looks Mark right in the eyes. “Mark-yah,” he says, aware peripherally that he seems to have defaulted to Korean and his mother would probably be very fucking proud of him. “You—hi.”</p><p>“Johnny-hyung,” says Mark. He—Johnny thinks his voice might be… different?</p><p>“Hi,” Johnny says. “Hello. I got your note. I ate your omelet. I mean.” He takes a deep breath and pauses, the oxygen helping to clear his head. “Thank you for the omelet, it was nice.”</p><p>Mark stares at him with large, unreadable eyes, but Johnny doesn’t think he’s imagining it when he seems to visibly preen. “You ate that—God—you’re welcome?” says Mark.</p><p>Johnny feels the need to assure him even more. “Yes—it was really good. Thank you.”</p><p>Mark ducks his head; Johnny can tell for sure he’s pleased. “You didn’t have to come all the way here to tell me that, though,” he says in English. “You live in Queens.”</p><p>“It’s fine.” Johnny waves away the time spent crammed into the subway trying not to sob too obviously over the fact that Mark Lee made him a fucking <em>omelet</em>. Mark Lee showed up unprompted at his apartment because Johnny was sick. Mark Lee is one of Johnny’s favorite people—is funny, kind, and creative. Mark Lee is a werewolf, but Mark Lee is <em>Johnny’s </em>werewolf, and Johnny is a fucking <em>idiot</em>. “You know all those things I said about how we should just be friends and it would be okay?” Johnny says, somehow managing to keep his eyes on Mark’s face.</p><p>Mark is silent for a terribly long time. Johnny worries that he’s even stopped breathing. Then he licks his lips and takes one careful step out of his doorway. He’s not wearing socks—is standing barefoot in only a pair of sweatpants that are barely hanging on, and now that Johnny’s this close, he can see that he’s got too many scars for a twenty-four-year-old.</p><p><em>Werewolf</em>, Johnny’s brain supplies for him. <em>Every full moon he turns into a raging hungry wolf… a raging hungry wolf who feels safe with </em>me<em>, who doesn’t want to leave </em>me<em>, because I’m the only person he knows he’ll never ever harm</em>.</p><p>“Mark?” says Johnny, not sure if he needs to repeat his question.</p><p>“Yeah… I remember when you said that.” Mark’s voice definitely sounds deeper and more authoritative. Johnny’s throat feels like it’s closing up.</p><p>“It was all absolute bullshit,” he says, and launches himself right at Mark.</p><p>“Oh, thank God,” Mark says, and meets him halfway.</p>
<hr/><p>It takes more than a few knocked over items before they reach anything approximating a horizontal surface, at which point Johnny discovers that Mark really isn’t wearing anything other than sweatpants—not even a pair of his “moon boxers,” as it were. He’s really fucking into that, it seems; ends up sliding a hand down the back of Mark’s sweats to cup his ass in between full-bodied shudders.</p><p>Mark shivers.</p><p>Mark shivers and makes noises and bites against Johnny’s mouth like he can’t help himself. Johnny’s into that too—how the sharpness of Mark’s canines is still just a shade lupine enough to be painful. He can’t seem to stop kissing Mark, even as he feels his lungs start to burn, and it makes talking very, very hard.</p><p>“You don’t have a—a <em>knot</em>?” Johnny asks finally, breathless and more than a little ridiculous.</p><p>Mark goes red in the face. “No, I do not have a dog dick, Johnny-hyung, what the fuck?” he shouts.</p><p>“Just checking,” Johnny says, slotting a leg between Mark’s just to be a hundred percent positive. “All those websites you sent me to said—”</p><p>Mark goes silent and more than a little wide-eyed, but he snaps out of it quick enough once he realizes Johnny is trying to get him out of his sweatpants. “Now, hold on, how come I’m practically naked and you’re fully clothed?”</p><p>“It’s because I’m the law,” says Johnny rather nonsensically, and Mark growls at him.</p><p>It’s not meant to be scary. It’s nothing how Mark sounded when he was fully wolf, or even when he was fully human and some teasing from Taeyong or Jaehyun went almost too far with him—but Johnny still feels the part of him that recognizes the danger go ever so slightly on edge.</p><p>Mark stills, a careful, terrified look flashing behind his eyes, and Johnny rushes forward to kiss him before he can run.</p><p>“Stop that,” he says against his mouth, not opening his eyes. “I’m not afraid of you—I feel safe with you.”</p><p>Mark’s barely breathing, shaking a little in the hold Johnny has on his torso.</p><p>Johnny opens his eyes, cupping Mark by both cheeks. They’re not really drastically different in height now that Johnny thinks about it, standing forehead to forehead sharing the same air. Mark’s thin and lovely and the perfect height to tuck his chin against Johnny’s collarbones—and then every four weeks, he’s huge and hulking and the stuff out of children’s nightmares.</p><p>“And what about you?” asks Johnny. “Are you—do you feel safe… with me—”</p><p>“Always,” rasps out Mark, no longer frozen and actively clutching Johnny right back; it’s easy for Johnny to nudge him towards the hem of his shirt, the button and zip of his pants, easy for them to fall back onto the bed they’ve ended up closest to and land in an entangled heap.</p><p>Mark goes down on his back and seems disgruntled about it, and Johnny files that information away for future use, kicking off his jeans and boxers and letting his eyes slide down the whole length of him. It’s no trouble at all to let his body slide down as well, dragging off Mark’s sweatpants as he goes.</p><p> “What are you doing?” says Mark, words coming out broken and unsteady.</p><p>“Getting my mouth on your not-dog-dick,” says Johnny, quite seriously, and then does just that—before Mark can protest.</p><p>Not that Mark would.</p><p>Johnny’s killer at blowjobs; everyone he’s been with would say so.</p><p>Mark jackknifes off the bed, the hold Johnny’s got on his hips the only thing saving him from choking on Mark’s dick. “Fuck—you—Johnny-hyung—”</p><p>Johnny would say something about how <em>now</em> he’s Johnny-hyung, but he’s much too busy hollowing his mouth along the line of Mark’s cock, tracking the success of his technique in the quality of Mark’s swears and the fruitless rock of Mark’s hips. Johnny would give himself an “A” for effort—slang Johnny’s never even heard of keeps passing through Mark’s lips.</p><p>“I—I hate—oh God—don’t stop—”</p><p>Johnny doesn’t intend to, even though he’d be sad to end things early. Still… he had gone right in guns blazing—bitten off more than he could chew, but not literally, fuck no. Johnny pulls off of Mark’s cock with a satisfyingly wet pop. Already his mouth feels hot and sloppy; his throat, just edging over into raw. Johnny flicks his bangs out of his eyes and tries to concentrate. He stopped blowing Mark for a reason. “Hey, are you clean—I mean I know you’re a werewolf—”</p><p>Giving Mark enough time to breathe was a mistake, because in no time at all Mark has reversed their position, Johnny lying flat on his back with Mark lying over him, breath hot against Johnny’s right cheek.</p><p>Johnny thinks unbidden of the mythology around werewolves, about how Mark need only sink his teeth in and Johnny would be like Mark <em>forever</em>—</p><p>“Not forever, and only if it was yesterday,” says Mark, clearly picking up on Johnny’s thoughts without Johnny even voicing them.</p><p>“Too bad,” Johnny says, and means it.</p><p>Mark’s eyes bloom black. Very carefully, he leans down and sets his teeth around Johnny’s jugular—not hard enough to do any damage, but enough that the too-sharp points of his teeth sit there like a reminder.</p><p>“Mm… I don’t know,” Johnny says, trying for composed and missing sorely. “I think—not my thing”—Mark tightens his hold just enough that Johnny zones out briefly but still doesn’t break skin—“which is a relief, honestly, because your roommate is a fucking vampire—<em>oh</em>—”</p><p>Mark pulls his lips back then shifts forward to better bracket Johnny’s face with both arms, play-bite turning into a love bite without much effort, the “don’t talk about Jaehyun while you’re naked and under me” crystalline clear.</p><p>“Hey.” Johnny puts a hand on Mark’s flank to reassure him. “I’m not—I just like <em>you</em>, not-dog dick and all.”</p><p>As if to prove a point, Mark slides a leg over Johnny’s and rocks down into him, their cocks sliding together wonderfully and making Johnny’s chest start to heave. “Mine,” Mark says in case that wasn’t already clear, voice careful and just a shade menacing; Johnny nods, ready to be done with foreplay.</p><p>“We need—lube,” he says, cursing the state he was in when he left his apartment, and eyeing Mark hopefully. “Do you—”</p><p>Mark’s expression is crestfallen. “No,” he says. His muscles shift like he’s going to pull away and Johnny swings a leg behind his thigh before he can do so, both arms grappling for a hold. “Hyung—”</p><p>“Don’t you dare—there’s got to be some—don’t look at me like that—<em>Jaehyun</em>—”</p><p>Mark’s eyes narrow like he can’t believe his roommate has come up again, but then he seems to concede the point. “Okay, fine, fair.” He gives Johnny a moment to disentangle from him, and then raises one eyebrow when Johnny doesn’t. “Am I getting it?”</p><p>“He’s your roommate,” says Johnny.</p><p>Mark sighs, but clambers off Johnny in search of supplies regardless.</p><p>“It’s only because I want you to fuck me sooner,” Johnny tells him happily, timing it for when Mark reaches the bedside dresser he’s going to be rummaging through, and grins at the sound of things scattering as Mark’s search turns clumsy. Then he pauses, worrying. “Unless you’d rather”—Johnny makes a rather crude gesture even though Mark can’t see him—“the other way around—”</p><p>“No—I”—Mark turns and he’s got a bottle of lube in one slightly-shaking hand—“are you sure you trust me—”</p><p>“Mark,” Johnny says, glaring. “Come on—”</p><p>“No—I just—I haven’t—not once—since.” Mark raises a hand and points about his face in a way that somehow conveys “became a werewolf,” and Johnny’s protests stop.</p><p>“Come here,” he says. “It’s unfair that you’re all the way over there—”</p><p>Mark scrambles back for the bed, dropping the lube somewhere between them. Johnny wraps back around him and can’t help but pause to give him a kiss. He tastes like watching the sunrise, like everything Johnny wants for his future and more; he tastes like home, he smells like home, he’s Mark Lee, Johnny’s werewolf, Johnny’s <em>mate</em>, the other half of Johnny’s soul.</p><p>“All the more reason for you to fuck me,” Johnny tells him, and delights in the full-body shudder that sentence incites. “But seriously—no one?”</p><p>“I am a werewolf,” Mark says, and means, <em>I was afraid, but I’m not with you</em>. Johnny feels warm.</p><p>“That wouldn’t have stopped me.”</p><p>“Yes it would have.” Mark pulls out of the hug a little so that he can force direct eye contact, only Johnny doesn’t let himself be bothered and stares at him right back. “You should fuck me instead—what if I lose control and hurt you—”</p><p>“You’re not going to hurt me,” says Johnny, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. “Mark—you’re not—don’t you trust me? Don’t you feel safe—”</p><p>“<em>Only</em> with you—Hyung, come on—”</p><p>“Mark-yah.” Johnny puts both hands on Mark’s face and cups it again, smoothing both thumbs along the high points of his cheeks. “I love you—I trust you—you’re my <em>person</em>—”</p><p>“I’m your werewolf,” Mark corrects. “I—” He clearly doesn’t know how to finish that sentence and Johnny takes pity on him. He lets go of Mark’s face and searches the bed for the lube with one hand.</p><p>“You’re not going to hurt me,” he says, as he does so. “It’s just because it’s been longer, for you.” Johnny pauses, mostly so he can let the meaning of that sentence really sink in and mean something; Mark’s lips curls, his pupils going wide. “Prep is important and requires patience.” Johnny licks his lips, flick his gaze purposefully down. “I don’t know if I have the patience to take my time with you.”</p><p>Mark groans, rolling to the side and flopping back, locating the lube without even having to look and setting the bottle down in the center of Johnny’s chest helpfully. “You’re going to be the <em>death </em>of me—”</p><p>“I should hope not,” Johnny says, then pops the cap. Mark insists on helping Johnny wet his fingers, and then dirty talks Johnny through putting in two of those fingers, and then gets impatient with Johnny and takes over. Mark ends up wrapped entirely around Johnny, tauntingly stuck in the preparation phase and not seeming at all inclined to move on. He’s clearly enjoying every little hiccup and half-bitten-off attempt at his name. “You’re such a <em>dick</em>, Mark Lee,” Johnny says after nearly five minutes of this, and Mark just grins and presses the gentlest of kisses to the line of Johnny’s hair before retreating, fingers and all.</p><p>“I realized,” Mark says. “What you were asking about earlier. I don’t get sick from anything except silver but like… condoms—”</p><p>“I don’t care if Jaehyun disowns you for breaking his entire house,” Johnny says, and Mark takes that as his cue to rip the entire drawer out of the bedside table, scattering the contents this way and that without a pause. It’s caveman and werewolf and shouldn’t be hot, but Johnny’s breath punches out of his lungs regardless.</p><p>“Don’t think too hard about it,” Johnny tells Mark once he locates a condom. He has no interest in any aspect of Jaehyun’s sex life, barring the parts of it that are currently benefiting him. Although… “But afterwards we’re totally making fun of him—is the lube flavored?”</p><p>Johnny scrambles a little pointlessly on the bed and Mark levels him a look.</p><p>“Right. Sorry.” Johnny watches Mark roll the condom on with eager quietness, and then goes down on his back, angling his hips just so. “Nghh, fuck, I <em>love </em>you,” Johnny says as Mark carefully and slowly sinks the full length of his dick into him, and then both of them close their eyes.</p><p>Johnny only knows because he catches Mark before Mark’s had a chance to open his; thinks briefly that Mark has loveliest eyelashes, before Mark leans down to seal his mouth over top Johnny’s for another few minutes of wonderful, lovely kissing, and thoughts about eyelashes very quickly fall by the wayside. Mark is an unfairly good kisser. Careful, attentive, and just mean enough that Johnny’s head spins at the possibilities, though that might be the lack of oxygen. Mark kisses like he could kiss for hours, and Johnny would love nothing better, only… Mark’s cock—Mark’s lovely, beautiful, perfectly proportioned cock—is currently sitting still inside Johnny’s ass and Johnny? Johnny just feels impatient.</p><p>“You seem tense,” says Mark, pulling away from Johnny’s lips. His voice is very, very low and when Johnny opens his eyes, all he can see of his irises is a sliver. “What’s wrong, Johnny-hyung?”</p><p>Johnny narrows his eyes. “You’re <em>not moving</em>,” he says, squirming a little on the bed and then glaring when that gets him nothing. Mark is <em>smaller</em> than Johnny is, but Mark is also a supernatural being, so of course Johnny can’t get him to budge. He hooks his ankles behind Mark’s thighs regardless and keeps glaring.</p><p>“Right.” There’s new strain in Mark’s eyes and a shade of danger in the tone of Mark’s voice. Johnny chases it like the high he’s done pretending it isn’t.</p><p>“Mark-yah,” he whines.</p><p>Mark thrusts, gentle and careful—so very, very careful. But when Johnny looks at him, his eyes are feral. Heat curls automatically in Johnny’s belly. He reaches out one hand to land on Mark’s ass, tugging pointedly.</p><p>Mark doesn’t budge, poised overtop of Johnny with his entire dick in him keeping perfectly, supernaturally still. The supernatural part of the equation is great for Johnny, but the rest of it? Not so much. Eventually Mark seems to compose himself enough to be capable of tiny movements, but of course those thrusts are <em>not enough</em>, and Johnny is going to kill him.</p><p>“Mark, come <em>on</em>,” Johnny complains after several more moments of this, giving up on getting more by trying to nudge Mark physically and trying his hand at nudging him verbally. “I’m not going to break—you’re not going to break me—come on.”</p><p>Mark’s mouth has fallen open and he can’t seem to stop growling at Johnny, but his thrusts are still too slow. Too shallow. Not nearly enough. “I don’t know,” Mark says, and the growl is doing things to his tone that makes Johnny want to spend the rest of his life in bed with him. “I think you want me to. Johnny-hyung.” He times a perfectly aimed thrust just a shade deep enough on Johnny’s name, and Johnny groans, vision going spotty and toes starting to curl.</p><p>“Yeah,” he agrees, never one to be ashamed of it. “Yeah—of course—now please—”</p><p>Mark seems invigorated, shifting around on the bed so he can get a hand under one of Johnny’s knees and change the angle just so. Johnny sucks in desperate gulps of air, vision going spotty. Mark’s other hand lands to the left side of Johnny’s head and practically slices a pillow in half, feathers going everywhere.</p><p>“That’s hot,” Johnny manages, intending to continue, only when Mark cocks his head at him and hums, chest rumbling and pace unrelenting, Johnny gives up on teasing and starts working on not orgasming—not yet—not this soon.</p><p>“Hyung,” Mark says. “Johnny-hyung.”</p><p>“I like it,” Johnny pants back. “When you say my name.” Something catches in his chest. “Say it informally.”</p><p>“Johnny-yah, stop <em>talking</em>,” Mark replies instantly, and Johnny nearly bites through his own tongue.</p><p>“Also hot,” he says, then slides a hand down to tug at his cock. His vision whites out at the touch but it’s still not quite enough. Johnny makes a noise regardless—an embarrassingly loud <em>whine</em>—and when he comes back to himself Mark has practically plastered himself to Johnny and seems to be hiding, face tucked against Johnny’s throat. Johnny lifts his free hand to touch the back of him, sliding up his spine to curl in the hair at the nape of his neck curiously. “Mark?”</p><p>“You just—don’t—move for a moment—”</p><p>Johnny stares down at him, then thrusts mostly involuntarily through the circle of his own fingers just to see what that does for him. It’s good, it’s great, and Johnny’s body clenches down on Mark’s cock without his say-so, which is probably why Mark’s face is buried in Johnny’s collarbones and Mark’s hands are on their way to tearing down into the mattress.</p><p>“Sorry,” Johnny says, even though he isn’t really sorry—not when stroking his cock feels so fucking wonderful, though Mark doing it would probably feel better.</p><p>“No, you’re not,” says Mark, the mind reader, and lifts his head.</p><p>Johnny gazes back at him, mind going blank.</p><p>For the next few thrusts Mark lets Johnny get away with jerking himself off in time with everything, left hand making an absolute mess of what’s left of the pillow. “I love you,” Mark says, the first time he’s said it in fucking <em>human</em> words, and Johnny whines, strung out and on the cusp of going right the fuck over because of that sentence alone.</p><p>The one of Mark’s hands that’s not busy mauling the pillow reaches down and pries Johnny’s hand free from around his cock, then drags it up somewhere near their heads to intertwine their fingers. Johnny would be angry—by all means, the aching need to come should be making him livid—but he can’t help but go warm all over at how sweet it is that Mark wants to hold hands. Still—</p><p>“Mark,” Johnny drawls out, trying for put-upon-chastisement but self-correcting when he sees the look on Mark’s face. It’s this lazy, self-satisfied little smile that’s just a shade too shy to be fully convincing, but it’s there none the same; the smirk, the curving, perfect cadence of his thrusts, the way he’s got Johnny on his back and pinned, absolutely fucking <em>covering him</em> somehow from head to toe. Johnny thinks that shouldn’t be possible. Johnny ought to have more than a toe on him—the whole of his shins—yet still.</p><p>“I want you to come—on my cock—only.” Mark’s clearly having trouble with words, and Johnny loves him so fully that he almost hurts with it, although that might just be the raging fire inside him that’s just waiting to crest over and then burn.</p><p>“You fucker,” Johnny says, gasps, and puts both hands on the back of Mark’s neck to haul him in to kiss him, sighing, as Mark holds his hand and thoroughly <em>makes love to </em>him, with eyes that look just a shade inhuman. Mark’s not easy to hold, too strong and distracted, and Johnny thinks suddenly of the collar Jaehyun bought all those days ago. He imagines it around Mark’s perfect neck as something to hold, to tug, and use to direct. He feels light headed. He forgets how to breathe, for two seconds, then three.</p><p>“What are you thinking about?” says Mark, panting and eyeing Johnny’s mouth curiously.</p><p>“Nothing,” says Johnny. “Fucking you—”</p><p>Mark’s lashes flutter and he comes close enough so that Johnny can finally kiss him, but the roll of his hips is such that Johnny’s mostly only capable of half-hearted nips. He hadn’t thought coming untouched was going to be an option—Mark’s wishes notwithstanding—but now…</p><p>“God,” Johnny says. “God—oh fuck—you—<em>fucker</em>.”</p><p>“Your fucker,” Mark says—growls—and Johnny is too busy seeing stars to tease him.</p><p>Afterwards, Johnny just wants to lie curled up against Mark and <em>bask</em>, but eventually enough of the world filters back in for him to realize that the bed they’re in is not Mark’s. No—it’s very clearly <em>Jaehyun’s</em>—made obvious by the piano in the corner and the record player Johnny can see tucked onto one of the high shelves, and even the non-descript comforter they’ve thoroughly defiled. Johnny doesn’t know if he should laugh or cry.</p><p>“Mark-yah,” he says eventually. Jaehyun’s bedside table has had the entire drawer pulled out and flung everywhere—Mark and Johnny have used Jaehyun’s lube, his condoms, and destroyed at least two of his pillows. Johnny has to admit—it’s kind of funny. He picks laughter.</p><p>Mark makes a noise from somewhere around Johnny’s right nipple. “Yeah?”</p><p>“This is Jaehyunnie’s bed.”</p><p>There’s a pause.</p><p>Mark lifts up his head, hair sticking this way and that, and squints around the room. “Shit,” he says once he’s finished his appraisal, flopping back against the sheets and shifting so that he and Johnny are lying side by side, instead of piled on top of one another. “It is.”</p><p>“Mhmm,” says Johnny. “I’d say you could come move in with me, but I think we all know who has the better sugar daddy.”</p><p>Mark punches Johnny in the sternum. “How dare you,” he says. “Now the image is in my mind.”</p><p>“Oh, Yuno-oppa,” says Johnny, making his voice preppy on purpose. “A brand-new brownstone for little old me? You shouldn’t have.”</p><p>Mark tackles him into the bed this time, fake-snarling, and Johnny laughs into it, wrapping his arms around Mark and just fucking holding him, so happy he feels like he could just burst. “God, Mark, I really fucking <em>love you</em>—”</p><p>“I love you too,” says Mark, sobering immediately and pulling away so that he can look Johnny seriously in the eyes. “Really. And not just because of the wolf—”</p><p>“Fuck the wolf—not literally,” says Johnny. “The wolf is <em>you</em> Mark Lee. And I love all of you.”</p><p>Mark looks down at him with his mouth parted and then he lunges, going for Johnny’s mouth with ferocity.</p><p>Johnny goes to meet him halfway with pleasure—and then a man materializes in the room with them and shoves the two of them bodily apart.</p><p>“Mark Lee!” the man says, chest heaving and sounding like he’s putting in an enormous effort. “I know you can fucking <em>hear and see me</em>, you asshole!”</p><p>Johnny’s mouth opens and closes.</p><p>“What do you have to say for yourself?” continues the man, sounding livid.</p><p>Mark looks sheepish. “Doyoung-hyung,” he says, confirming Johnny’s suspicions with a rub of his hand at the back of his neck. “Hi.”</p><p>“‘Hi,’” repeats Doyoung, not even sparing Johnny a look. “‘Hi.’ ‘<em>Hi</em>.’ You fucking<em> walked through me </em>on your way to<em> pound town</em>”—<em>Pound town</em>, mouths Johnny, unable to help himself, and Mark snickers—“and you’re going to tell me ‘<em>hi</em>’?”</p><p>“Sorry?” offers Mark. “You know how it is—mate frenzy!”</p><p>“Just for that, the next time Jungwoo wants to kiss for real I am <em>possessing you</em>,” hisses Doyoung, before whirling to face Johnny with a suddenly bright, still-incredibly-threatening smile. “Youngho-hyung. Lovely to finally meet you. Take care of our Mark or else.” With that, Doyoung vanishes, disappearing from Johnny’s sight as quickly as he’d come.</p><p>“He’s <em>gone</em> gone,” says Mark finally, after more than a few more breaths of air. “In case you were waiting for permission to kiss me—”</p><p>“I love you,” Johnny tells him again, because everything else is kind of secondary—the ghost, the threats of ghost possession, all of it. “All of you,” he adds, just to be clear. “The wolf you, the human you—the in between.” He risks a grin. “I even love you when you’re trying to murder small animals for me.”</p><p>Mark makes a face, cheeks gone bright red. “You—God—Johnny, you don’t need to say all that—”</p><p>“I want to,” Johnny says. “I’m going to say that to you for the rest of forever.” He has a horrible thought; Jungwoo’s text about living almost as long as Jaehyun springing to the forefront of his mind. “I—are you going to outlive me terribly?”</p><p>Mark makes a low, threatening noise and curls even closer, almost like he wants to get between Johnny and death itself. “No,” he says. “No—you’ll live as long as I will; magic—don’t ask me how it works—”</p><p>Johnny isn’t going to, but he still has to know: “But will I <em>age</em> like you?” he says, thinking <em>magic; cool</em> and then <em>wrinkles, joint pain, getting mistaken for Mark’s fucking father because they’re both clearly Asian and together</em>. “Because it’s one thing if we’re both like perpetually in our twenties like Jaehyun and Taeyong, but another if three decades on I look like your grandfather—I don’t know if I can get behind <em>that</em>—”</p><p>“Tomorrow we can get on Skype with some of Jungwoo’s friends and you can see,” says Mark. “Johnny-hyung.”</p><p>Johnny presses a kiss to the tip of his nose and holds him back just as tightly. “I’m kidding,” he says. “I’d be happy to spend eternity looking like your grandfather—” Johnny breaks off in a laughing squawk, squirming away from Mark’s fingers as he gives up on simply smothering Johnny and starts tickling.</p><p>They go another round that afternoon, still in Jaehyun’s room and bed, and then eventually they relocate to Mark’s bedroom, locking the door for safety and taking great pleasure in the sounds of Jaehyun discovering everything sometime later that evening.</p><p>Doyoung turns visible again to come in and tell them Mark has officially been disowned and Jaehyun is moving in with Taeyongie <em>right this instant</em>, but Mark just throws a pillow through the ghost and seems unbothered.</p><p>“He’ll probably make you pay rent,” Doyoung says, refusing to acknowledge the fact that Johnny is only covered in a bed sheet and has no plans on acting embarrassed or covering up.</p><p>“That’s fine,” says Mark.</p><p>“I’ll help,” adds Johnny. “My place is terrible, anyway—and you’re so close to work.” There’s a beat. “Unless that’s—I just meant, if you needed—I’m sure you’re fine because of your book—”</p><p>“Johnny-hyung.” Mark interrupts Johnny with a finger in the center of Johnny’s lips. “I’d love it if you moved in with me.”</p><p>There’s nothing wrong with going again—especially since this would be the first time in Mark’s bed proper.</p><p>“Ugh, they’re making eyes at each other.” Doyoung disappears through the locked doorway with an ominous thud of footsteps but Johnny ignores them in favor of kissing Mark breathless. “No, I will not be going back to Taeyongie’s with you; the two of you are <em>worse</em>.”</p><p>“I love you, Johnny-hyung,” says Mark quietly, almost like he can’t quite believe it.</p><p>“I love you too,” replies Johnny. “I’m very glad I arrested you for being a werewolf.”</p><p>Mark pulls back a bit and narrows his eyes. “You didn’t—well I <em>guess </em>that’s true,” he says, sounding not entirely sold on it.</p><p>“It was the most important arrest I’ve ever made in my life,” continues Johnny, as if he hadn’t said anything, and Mark sighs.</p><p>“You’re a romantic, aren’t you,” he says.</p><p>Johnny just blinks back. “I’m <em>your </em>romantic,” he says. “And you’re—”</p><p>“Yours,” offers Mark, before Johnny can say anything else too embarrassing. “I’m just yours.”</p><p>Johnny’s heart feels about two sizes too large for his chest. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah—and I’m yours.”</p><p>“Cool,” says Mark. “Now where were we? Before Doyoungie interrupted?” He leans in before Johnny can formulate a response but Johnny doesn’t even want to, too busy kissing Mark back and thinking <em>mine</em> and <em>forever</em> and all sorts of other nonsense about how he’ll have to start marking his calendar for the full moon so that he can take off that night and not end up called away for other crimes. He thinks about telling his mom about Mark—for real this time, and dragging him home to meet her in person. He imagines telling Stephanie, had in fact tested the waters by letting her know, <kbd>I’m dating Mark now and also he’s a werewolf. Taeyongie and Jaehyunnie are vampires</kbd>, before leaving his phone across the room on silent. He thinks about meeting Jungwoo—about meeting Jungwoo’s friends—about what it would mean to live forever.</p><p>But mostly, Johnny just thinks about Mark and how lucky he is to have found him, and finds he doesn’t mind the rest of it very much at all.</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
<h4>Saturday, October 28, 2023<br/>
The Hunters Moon</h4><p> </p>
<hr/><p>Johnny has just finished staring down Mark and making him give up a perfectly innocent, fluffy rabbit when he hears the crack of footsteps that can’t be any of his two vampires and comes face to face with Rogers. The woman has one hand wrapped around her flashlight trying to blind Johnny, and the other is holding a candy bar. Oh yeah. Johnny had somehow forgotten that it was almost Halloween. “Rogers,” he says. “Andromeda. Hi.”</p><p>Rogers stares back at Johnny with her mouth fallen open, probably because of Mark, who is no longer attempting to maul a small animal, but is still a giant, human-height werewolf with very scary eyes and sharp fangs. To reassure her, Johnny reaches out to pat his werewolf on the head, delighting in the way Mark can’t help but close his eyes at the contact.</p><p>“Fancy running into you here,” Johnny continues, gesturing about the woods.</p><p>Rogers just keeps staring with her mouth open, looking too shocked for words.</p><p>“You know Mark,” Johnny continues, introducing the werewolf after a beat. “Um—and Jaehyun is around here somewhere with a surplus of money to bribe you in case you’ve forgotten—”</p><p>“Absolutely not; I still haven’t recovered from the loss of the ten thousand dollars you refuse to give me.” Jaehyun appears out of nowhere in his Bela Lugosi-inspired Dracula costume, complete with white waistcoat and cape. Mark snaps his teeth playfully at the vampire upon seeing him, before circling around Jaehyun to greet Taeyong, who slinks in behind Jaehyun equally silently. Taeyong was supposed to be Nosfeartu, but Jaehyun drew the line at a bald cap, and so mostly Taeyong is wearing a lot of eyeliner and an excess of shoulder pads. He began the night with prosthetic fingers, but somewhere in the interim they disappeared. Johnny really hopes they’re somewhere safe and/or he fed them to Mark—Mark will eat anything—because otherwise, as one of the cops tasked with the park, he’d hate to have to deal with the mess someone finding realistic fingers would bring.</p><p>Rogers blinks between the vampires and the werewolf and finally Johnny himself, still not speaking.</p><p>“I’m Bella Swan,” Johnny feels the need to explain, in case that was not clear. It’s probably not—Johnny’s been growing out his hair so he’s not wearing a wig and all he’s got on are jeans and some shirts Stephanie insisted made him look like a female high schooler. Compared to Jaehyun and Taeyong, Johnny just looks like a guy. Admittedly a guy on a walk with two vampires and a werewolf, but still.</p><p>Rogers finally closes her mouth. She picks up her radio. “False alarm,” she says. “There’s no way that lady saw anything other than a deer. I’ve been up and down the whole Ramble, and nothing.” <em>You owe me</em>, she mouths at Johnny afterwards, listening carefully to Everett’s commands.</p><p>Johnny just gives her a salute, before watching her turn and continue on her way.</p><p>Jaehyun gazes after her with a long look, turning ever so slightly towards Mark. “I like that woman a lot,” he says, rolling his eyes when Taeyong makes a noise, but holding hands with the other vampire anyway because deep down he’s just as possessive and sappy. “You couldn’t have decided <em>she</em> was the one?”</p><p>Mark stares back at Jaehyun with a blank, almost unintelligent look, before nudging Johnny once in the belly with his nose, and then taking off back into the woods at full speed.</p><p>“Right, of course, how could I forget Johnny-hyung is your favorite person in the world and then some.” Jaehyun puts his cape over both arms and leaps after the wolf, the sounds of their play fighting rapidly disappearing alongside the both of them.</p><p>“I’m glad he found you, Johnny-hyung,” says Taeyong quietly, once the two of them are all alone.</p><p>“Me too,” agrees Johnny, content to stand together in silence. Then Mark comes bounding back to them enthusiastically, stopping in front of them and circling to show Johnny his back with clear purpose. Instead of climbing on, Johnny waits a moment for Jaehyun, but the vampire doesn’t emerge. Taeyong seems unbothered, though, so Johnny gives Mark his full attention.“What did you do to Jaehyunnie?” he asks.</p><p>Mark just wags his tail, utterly unrepentant, and Jaehyun emerges from the underbrush several moments later, looking soaking wet, with his cape covering his entire face and leaves all in his slicked back hair.</p><p>“Just you wait until you’re human again,” Jaehyun says, staggering in the correct direction because he’s a supernatural being, even if he does at present resemble a lake monster. “See if I let you live in my house ever again.”</p><p>Mark just yips, unconcerned.</p><p>Jaehyun growls, coming to a halt in front of them and dripping menacingly.</p><p>Taeyong hides a laugh behind one hand and goes to help his boyfriend sort himself out, picking out underbrush carefully and leaving the cape over his face until the last minute, throwing the thing back like they’re getting married.</p><p>Johnny looks away to give them their privacy and leans his full weight up against Mark instead. “Hey,” he says. “I love you, you know that?”</p><p>Mark wags his tail once more and then—even though it’s barely been two hours, only just creeping past three a.m.—seems to give a lurch, whines softly like he’s not sure what’s even happening, and collapses to the ground beside Johnny fully human.</p><p>Johnny shrugs out of one of his flannel shirts and drapes it around the back of him. “Woah—hey—Jaehyun—look—he did it—how long even was that—”</p><p>Mark stares up at him with pale features and wild eyes, still mostly wolf and breath coming in all raspy. “I love you too,” is all he says, like he went human just so that he could tell Johnny so, and Johnny leans in and kisses him; there’s nothing else he can do.</p><p>Mark kisses Johnny back—warm and solid and everything Johnny didn’t know he was looking for, and Johnny thinks, <em>God, wow, I get to have this every day for the rest of my life and then some</em>.</p><p>Overhead shines the full moon.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Who knew that I—the most utterly, utterly vampire girl <i>I</i>—could write 35k of werewolves. </p><p>This fic was inspired by <a href="https://twitter.com/zimriya/status/1359514414165147651">this</a>—THANKS SLEEPY! 🌕🐺. Technically it has a full playlist, but the main song I listened to while writing was “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/15049rGLXHwrWtE4euUb5C?si=2N23Q63uSbGFhhP00xicbg">The Killing Moon</a>” by Echo &amp; the Bunnymen.</p><p>Share this fic: <a href="https://twitter.com/zimriya/status/1370019585160847363">Twitter</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>